Lost on the Road of Life
by Jesse A. Harper
Summary: If there was a list of all the stupid things that she had done up until that point, kicking a ninja in the groin was probably at the very top. When a college student from Portland finds herself in a bad situation, how will she manage to deal with it?
1. Chapter One: It's All Over

Lost on the Road of Life

**Lost on the Road of Life**

**Chapter One:**

**It's All Over**

"_Your bottle is almost empty._

_You know this can't go on._

_Because of you my mind is always racing."_

Erin smirked as she happily belted out the lyrics to one of her favorite Three Days Grace songs, her fingers practically dancing over the keyboard to her laptop as the final three paragraphs to her English final paper took shape. The teenager felt a rush of elation as she realized that she was almost done with the essay that had tormented her for the past month. It was at moments like these that the nineteen-year old was perfectly content to be in college, despite the enormous workload.

"_The needle's breaking your skin._

_The scar is sinking in._

_And now your trip begins._

_But it's all over for, it's all over for you, for you._

_When you're on the edge and falling off;_

_It's all over for you._

_When you're on the edge and falling off;_

_And it's all over."_

Suddenly, a loud shriek coming from outside the teen's room caused her to jerk backwards in her chair, eliciting a loud and foul curse from the nineteen-year old as she almost fell out of her chair and cracked her head on the desk as the seat lurched backwards in an attempt to fall over. The massive German Shepherd resting on the teen's bed sat up immediately as he watched his mistress try not to fall down, his brown eyes intently focused on the desk. When no other harm came, the dog settled back down onto the bed. It took a few seconds for the girl to regain her balance, and when she did she was not happy.

"Dammit Jess, what the hell?" Erin growled as she wrenched off her headphones and threw them down onto her desk next to her laptop before standing up and storming over to her bedroom door. The cries of distress grew louder as the angry teen threw her door open and stalked down the stairs and out into the living room-type area of the dorm that she shared with another girl, only to find her dorm mate perched in front of her own respective laptop with a look of complete and utter horror on her face.

Erin's right eye suddenly developed a nervous twitch as she glared at her dorm mate, who was still engrossed with the images on the computer screen.

"What the bloody hell is going on?!" the nineteen-year old demanded as she fixed Jess with a withering glare. The red-headed girl let out a yelp as she was snapped back into reality before she spun around to stare at her irritated roommate.

"Uh… Erin, how nice to see you…" she muttered lamely, a hint of nervousness in her voice. "I was wondering if you were still alive in there."

Erin just let out a sigh and rolled her eyes in response as she massaged the bridge of her nose in obvious frustration. "Hah bloody hah, so not funny."

Jess gave her a sheepish smile in response as she rubbed the back of her head. "So, how's your paper going?"

"Well, I was on a roll until **someone** screamed like they were about to be ritualistically murdered," the girl grumbled darkly, her hazel-green eyes narrowed dangerously. "I thought that you were supposed to be studying for your math final."

"Umm… heh he…" Jess giggled nervously as she suddenly found the legs of her jeans to be interesting. "I got it all done."

"Bull."

"Hey, I did!"

"Why do I not believe you?"

"Because you're a distrustful midget with a Napoleon complex?"

**WHACK!!**

"I am not short!" Erin snapped as she glared at Jess, who rubbed at the sore spot on her head ruefully. "I'm almost 5'6!"

"I'm still taller than you," the other girl pointed out with an evil smirk on her face. Erin scowled at her, but other than that said nothing. Jess grinned triumphantly as she eyeballed her roommate for a few moments, her blue eyes shining with the knowledge that she had something over the smaller girl.

"So, do you want to copy my answers?" she asked innocently. The expression on Erin's face immediately darkened even further as she struggled not to express her feelings using four-letter words.

"Hell no!" she finally ground out. "I'll never learn anything if I just have the answers handed to me!"

"Suit yourself."

"You just asked me if I wanted to cheat off you! What the hell is up with that?!"

"Well, you know what I always say. If at first you don't succeed… cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie your ass off and hope that the teacher'll buy it."

"You're corrupted."

"I try my best."

"… So many insulting comments, and not nearly enough time to say all of them."

Jess couldn't help but give Erin a Cheshire Cat grin as she leaned back in her chair and placed her hands behind her head; even though the two didn't act like it, they usually got along fairly well. Jess just enjoyed tormenting Erin whenever the opportunity presented itself, because the other girl was usually fairly easy-going and it was hard to irritate her sometimes. Although, when the nineteen-year old got mad, the results were truly spectacular, especially when the younger teen got so besides herself that a noticeable accent creeped into her voice.

"So, are you going to do your funny little accent bit now?" the red-head asked mischievously, giving the other girl cause to shoot her an incredibly filthy look as she scowled at the implications of her statement.

"No. And why do you think that's so damn funny?" Erin grumbled as she rolled her eyes upwards, even though she really didn't like her roommate's facetious comment. "I'm going back to my room now, where it's actually **sane**."

"Aw man, don't go pulling that cold English act on me," Jess whined, only to freeze in her seat as the other girl whirled around and leveled a venomous glare at her, visibly bristling at the insult.

"I'm Irish, not English. We tell people how we really feel. Now sod off."

The older girl blinked before she let out a wry chuckle, rubbing the back of her neck nervously.

"Heh heh… sorry about that. I forgot that you don't really like it when people say that kind of stuff."

"No, I hate it when people think that I'm English," Erin retorted as she let out an exasperated sigh. They'd had this conversation many times before, and as always Jess called her this just to get her riled up, usually when she wanted to avoid another topic. "I'm bloody Irish; get it right."

"I just think that it's funny that you have an accent and everything when you live here," Jess said with a chuckle. The nineteen-year old frowned as she stared at her roommate and arched a tawny eyebrow skeptically before she rolled her eyes upwards and prayed for divine intervention.

"I only have an accent when either A) I choose to, or B) I'm pissed off," Erin stated patiently, deliberately making sure that her voice held no trace of afore-mentioned accent. "Stop trying to make me mad just so you can hear it."

"But it's funny."

"To you maybe. But I am perfectly happy sounding like every other American teenager, despite what you may think about me needing to be 'unique'," the girl said with forced calm, trying to keep a firm grip on her temper as she started out the facts bluntly to her roommate. "I was born and raised here, and it's only by a sheer twist of fate that my dad came to the US from Ireland. Not to mention the fact that my grandparents managed to convince him and my mom to let my brothers and I spend the summers overseas with them."

Jess started to snicker softly at something that only her strange mind could possibly come up with, and Erin frowned as she turned around and started to head back to her room, letting out a world-weary sigh of blatant annoyance. After taking a few steps, the nineteen-year old turned around and stared at her dorm-mate curiously.

"Just what exactly were you screaming about anyway?" she asked before a look of suspicion crossed her face. "Please don't tell me that it had something to do with your anime crap that you watch all the time."

"Well, I'd be lying if I said it didn't. Besides, it's not crap!"

"Yes it is. There is absolutely no point in anyone sane even **wanting** to watch that mind-numbing junk."

"It's not mind-numbing, and it's not junk!"

"Says who? It's not like it even makes any sense!"

"Naruto makes loads of sense!!" Jess retorted hotly. Erin made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yeah right. Then explain to me in realistic terms how a ten-year old kid can pull a hundred-foot tall toad out of a cloud of smoke."

Jess was silent, and Erin gave her a wry smile in response.

"See?"

"I told you though, he used a summoning jutsu."

Erin just shook her head as she let out an annoyed sigh before she finally relented. "Listen; just keep the screaming down, okay? I really don't feel like getting into an argument right now, I have an English paper that's due tomorrow, a History final to study for, and I've got a splitting headache right now."

The redhead gave her a knowing smile as she walked up and patted Erin on the shoulder, her expression one of somewhat false sympathy. "I told you that you've been pushing yourself too hard. You're going to get sick if you keep this up. I know that you haven't gone to bed until after one in the morning for the past two weeks."

"I just have to get through tomorrow, and then I'll have the entire weekend ahead of me to get some rest before my next exam on Monday," the teen promised , ignoring the 'I told you so' attitude coming from the other girl before she checked her watch. "Crap! It's already eight o'clock! I need to finish my paper so I can study!!"

"Just don't kill your dog with that awful caterwauling that you call music and singing!"

"Shut up!"

Jess gave a wry chuckle as she watched Erin race off back into her room and slam the door shut, before she returned her attention back to the anime episode that she had been watching.

"It's not caterwauling," Erin huffed in disapproval as she sat back down at her desk and started typing again. She liked her rock music.

Her dog let out a low whine as he padded up to her and shoved his head under her arm, his large brown eyes pleading. The nineteen-year old let out an amused chuckle as she reached down and started to scratch behind the German Shepherd's ears.

"Cuchulainn, you big baby," she muttered affectionately. "You act all tough on the outside, but on the inside, you're just a big puppy. Thank God you're here though; otherwise I'd go absolutely nuts without having someone sane around."

(AN: The dog's name is pronounced Coo-collin. It means 'Culann's hound', and is the name of a famous Irish warrior found in folklore.)

The large dog let out a low growl of pleasure and his hind leg began to thump against the carpeted floor as the teenager expertly scratched behind his ears. Erin just shook her head and smiled as she continued to scratch, her thoughts a thousand miles away. She couldn't believe that she was almost finished with her first semester of college.

'_Man, I can't believe that I've been away from home for four months already,'_ the teen realized as she returned her attention back to her essay. _'It's still kind of weird to be living on my own, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.'_

Cuchulainn let out a low, pleading whine as he tried to beg for more attention, and Erin just sighed in response. She had been lucky to find a dorm that allowed dogs, since she hadn't wanted to leave Cuchulainn behind while she was at school. It was a three hour drive from her university to her hometown, and on most weekends she wasn't able to make the trip, so she had persuaded her parents to let her bring her dog with her.

It was definitely a decision that she didn't regret, although there were times when she wished that she didn't have to share her dorm with Jess. Somehow, in some strange odd way, the girly-girl preppy cheerleader type had become addicted to anime, and now talked about nothing else, except maybe getting Erin into more feminine clothing.

The last time such a suggestion had been made, when the two college students had first moved in together, it had resulted with the then-eighteen-year old threatening the older girl with a swift and violent retribution if she even **thought** about touching her clothes.

"Okay, what's another instance where animal rights activists go too far?" Erin muttered thoughtfully as she pulled out her notes and started paging through them. "I've already done mentioned the bit where the FBI considers the ELF and ALF to be terrorist organizations, and an instance where some activists raided a cancer research lab and set all the animals free. I just need another two examples to give before I'm finished."

Within a few minutes, the nineteen-year old was thoroughly engrossed in looking through her research notes, and completing her essay.

--

**Five hours later**

--

As Jess had predicted, Erin was still awake by one a.m., and she was dead tired. The teenager had just finished studying for her History final, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes open.

"All-nighters **suck**," Erin grumbled wearily as Cuchulainn lifted his head up from his paws to stare at her. "Damn I'm tired."

The nineteen-year old leaned back in her chair and sighed. All of a sudden, the room started to spin, and the girl yelped out a curse. Erin immediately clamped her eyes shut and waited until the spinning sensation had stopped before she dared to open her eyes again.

"Okay, that's it, I'm going to bed," she muttered as she ran a hand through her reddish-gold hair, with some brown mixed in as well, that went just past her mid-back in length. "I can take a hint."

Erin reached out and switched off the lamp at her desk as she pushed her chair away and stood up, her senses spinning feebly once again at the sudden shift in movement. The teenager didn't even bother to shove Cuchulainn off her bed as she climbed in and wearily pulled the covers over her.

She was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.

--

The next morning, Erin let out a low groan as she smacked the sleep button on her alarm clock as hard as she could. The piercing beeping noise that echoed from within the evil device came to a halt as she effectively shut off her alarm, and groaned once again as she sat up and winced as a shrieking pain lanced through her forehead.

"Damn it," the nineteen-year old moaned as she threw off her covers and got out of bed, noticing only then as she glanced out her bedroom window that it was pouring rain outside. The teenager shook her head and sighed as she opened her door and let Cuchulainn out of her room, before she headed into the small bathroom that she and Jess shared.

Erin promptly turned on the tap and splashed water on her face in order to wake up more thoroughly before she started brushing her teeth. The teenager had just finished rinsing her mouth out when Jess stumbled in, even less alert than Erin had been five minutes earlier.

"Mornin'," Jess mumbled blearily as she reached for her washcloth and towel. Erin just gave her roommate a wane smile as she returned to her room and started pulling together her school supplies while still in her pajamas. As the sound of rain pouring down outside grew louder, the teenager glanced over at her alarm clock.

"What in the…?" Erin began before she let out a yelp and darted over to her dresser, where she pulled out a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of blue jeans before she hastily started to get dressed. In less than two minutes, the nineteen-year old was completely dressed and ready to walk out the door.

Garbed in a long-sleeved black shirt, a knitted navy sweater, black leather hiking boots, and her old high-school letterman's jacket, Erin was effectively bundled up against the winter cold and wet. The teenager had just snatched an apple and a leftover roll from the fridge in the kitchen area when Jess strolled out from the bathroom in her pajamas, her hair wrapped up in a towel.

"Well you look like crap," she remarked bluntly as she pulled out a mug and fired up the coffee maker. Erin shot her a dirty look in response as she quickly jammed her black 'FBI' baseball cap on her head.

"Yeah, that's because I have class at eight, I have to get up at six, and I didn't get to bed until after one last night," she shot back irritably. "Not to mention the fact that I'm not a morning person in the first place."

"Your brothers have my sympathy. Living with you must've been hell," Jess said with a smirk as she reached into the fridge and pulled out a Mountain Dew before tossing it over to the other girl. "Here, catch."

Erin didn't as much as flinch as she easily snagged the can just before it hit the floor.

"Tyler's the one who tempts fate all the time. Keith's smart; he knows when to back off," she pointed out as she stuffed the caffeinated beverage into one of the side pockets of her backpack before glancing at her wristwatch. "Well, I've gotta go before I'm late. My English professor will rip my head off if I don't turn my essay in on time."

"Remind me never to piss off your professor," Jess remarked wryly as Erin headed towards the door. The other teen barked out a laugh as she stopped for a few seconds to give Cuchulainn a reassuring pat before she went out the door, and down the hall.

--

"Ugh, thank God that's over with," Erin grumbled as she exited her History classroom, her expression one of complete and utter exhaustion. Her headache had taken a turn for the worse in the middle of her History final, so it was a bit of a relief to be outside and in the open air.

'_I hope I did okay on the final. I can't afford to flunk my final exam because I had a migraine,'_ Erin thought as she massaged her forehead in a futile attempt to rid herself of the painful headache.

"I think I'm coming down with something," the teen muttered as she sat down on a bench outside her classroom underneath an overhang. The rain, if at all possible, had gotten worse, and was now coming down in buckets. Erin frowned as she glared up at the sky, her hazel eyes narrowed intently. She usually loved it when it rained, but right now all it was doing was making her headache even worse.

The nineteen-year old unzipped the smallest pocket of her forest green canvas backpack and pulled out a small bottle of Motrin that she carried around for emergencies. Twisting off the cap with practiced ease, she shook two small pills out of the container and into the palm of her hand. Once she had re-capped the bottle, Erin pulled a bottle of water out of one of the side pockets on her backpack and removed the cap before she took a long swig, popping the Motrin into her mouth before swallowing.

"I really need to get back to the dorm before this gets any worse," she murmured thoughtfully as she stared out into the rainy afternoon. "With my luck right now, it'll probably turn into a lightning storm when I'm halfway home."

With a wry chuckle at the thought, Erin adjusted her baseball cap as she stepped out into the downpour. After walking only a few yards away from the overhang, a wave of dizziness suddenly hit the teenager like the proverbial brick wall. Erin fought against the feeling as hard as she could as a roaring sound filled her ears and a bitter metallic taste welled up inside her mouth. The nineteen-year old barely had time to think as darkness suddenly enveloped her vision, before her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she slumped forward, out cold onto the concrete walkway.

--

_There were images… so many of them flashing through her mind at an almost incomprehensible speed. _

_Two boys arguing heatedly in a clearing… a gigantic fox… a sobbing boy with a fresh scar across the bridge of his nose…a sliver-haired man standing in the rain, staring at a large black stone… a blonde-haired boy watching other children his own age being taken home by their parents with a pained look in his eyes… an old man staring into a crystal ball thoughtfully…_

_Erin gritted her teeth as she clenched her eyes shut, her hands clutching the sides of her head as she attempted to block out the mental overload. Instead, the senseless pictures continued their onslaught, and all of a sudden the teenager was flooded with emotions all bombarding her at once._

_Fear… anger… hate… sorrow… she couldn't understand why she was feeling all of these at once, especially the hatred. It was almost like someone had sucked all the negative feelings out of everyone on the planet and was attempting to cram it into her entire body. As if that wasn't enough, voices started to swirl around her as well, showering the nineteen-year old with fragments of long-forgotten conversations._

"_Why do you even bother to protect that monster?! It's because of that… that __**demon**__ that your parents were destroyed! Don't you hate-"_

"_I'm gonna be Hokage, and then everybody'll have to respect me!"_

"_No one should tell the boy, or any of the other children, about the Nine-tailed fox residing within-"_

"_That's right! Even your beloved sensei hates your guts!!"_

"_If the bait is obvious, don't take it."_

"_You're not going home until you've cleaned off every single drop of paint!"_

"_If you __**ever**__ lay a hand on my sensei, I'll kill you!!"_

"_Let me go!! My mom and dad are still fighting back there!!"_

"_I was gonna save you for later, but I changed my mind. You're finished!"_

"_I don't care. I know, it's true that Shinobi who break the rules are regarded and known as trash... but you know what? Those who don't cherish their comrades are worse than trash! Since either way I'm going to be considered trash, I'd rather break all the rules! Rules are made to be broken! If that's not the right way of the Shinobi, then I'll smash the right way and make my own way!"_

_Erin bit back a whimper as pain surged throughout her entire body; the harder she fought against the images and voices invading her mind, the worse the pain got. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore._

"_STOP IT!!" she shrieked, her hands clutching her head tightly. "SHUT UP, JUST SHUT UP!! GET AWAY FROM ME!!"_

_As suddenly as they had come, the images and voices stopped, leaving the teenager floating alone in the endless inky void that surrounded her. Before Erin could relax however, the bottom dropped out of her stomach, and the nineteen-year old was sent plunging into the eternal darkness beneath her._

_All she could do was scream._

--

With a sharp gasp, Erin snapped awake, a light drizzle falling down onto her face helping to wake her up. The teenager let out a low groan as she slowly pushed herself up into a kneeling position from where she had been laying face-down on the ground.

"Nnnngh… what in the hell was that?" the girl muttered dazedly as she reached over and grabbed her baseball cap from where it had fallen on the ground before she jammed it back on her head. It was only then that she noticed that she wasn't lying on the pavement like she had been right when she passed out, but rather on grass instead.

Erin scowled as she glared at the wet dirt and grass beneath her, almost instantly figuring out what had happened. Some of the senior boys had probably found her when she had blacked out, and as a prank, had dragged her into the woods behind the campus.

Biting back a long stream of detailed profanities, the nineteen-year old got to her feet and looked around her, her hazel eyes narrowed slightly as she examined her surroundings. The idiots that had pulled this prank were going to be in a world of hurt once she got her hands on them.

"Jerks," Erin grumbled as she adjusted her backpack straps, making sure that nothing had been taken out of her pack. "What kind of person sees someone passed out and thinks 'hey, I'll go and leave them out in the middle of the woods for the hell of it', instead of taking them to the nurses office or something? Bastards."

Erin continued to grumble under her breath as she took a few slightly shaky steps forward, not noticing the faint noises of someone coming up behind her until a deliberate 'crack' sounded behind her. The hair along the back of the teenager's neck stood straight up and a chill went down her spine as she whirled around to face her stalker. Instead of seeing someone's face, the nineteen-year old found herself staring at the high black collar of some kind of cloak with red clouds outlined in white floating across it.

"Huh?"

The sound of a throat being cleared snapped the girl out of her slight daze, and she immediately looked up into the face of the person standing in front of her, only to let out a yelp of fright as she took several steps backwards. Two red eyes with what looked like commas swirling around the pupils stared back intently at her beneath long black bangs, and it was all Erin could do not to run away right then and there.

"What are you staring at?" the man said curtly, and Erin felt an icy chill seep into her very bones from the coldness of his voice. The nineteen-year old decided right then that it would be a very good idea to just stay quiet, and she slowly took a step back in an attempt to put as much distance in between her and the man as possible.

"I asked you a question, girl. Now answer me," the man growled. Erin took yet another step back, only to bump into something behind her. A low chuckle came from whatever she had bumped into, and the teenager immediately whirled around to face the person behind her. Hazel eyes grew wide in fear as she found herself face-to-face with someone who looked like one of his parents had been a shark.

"Holy shit!" Erin hissed as she stumbled backwards away from the two men, now thoroughly freaked out. _'What in the hell is going on?! Who are these guys?'_

"Well Itachi-sama, she speaks," the shark-man said with a harsh-sounding laugh. The other man, Erin assumed he was Itachi, made a low sound of agreement.

"Indeed."

The shark-man returned his attention to her and smirked, his white eyes practically boring into her very soul. Erin silently cursed her current inability to move as she dug her fingernails into her palms; it was almost as though someone had glued her feet to the ground.

"She's a strange one though," the shark-man remarked. "Her chakra is all constricted, and she doesn't look like much of a kunoichi to begin with."

Erin scowled at the comment; even though she had no idea what the hell 'chakra' or a 'kunoichi' were, she could still tell that it was meant to be an insult.

"I am more than capable of seeing that, Kisame," 'Itachi' stated coolly, his red eyes still focused on the teenage girl in front of him. "It looks like she has no idea as to what we're talking about though, if the idiotic look on her face is anything to go by."

"Hey, I do not have an 'idiotic look' on my face!" Erin growled as her patience finally snapped, even though a tiny voice in the back of her mind was now screaming 'you idiot!!' repeatedly. Itachi and Kisame both looked at her, the former with an impassive glare, while the other seemed to be amused by her defiance.

"Ohhh… it looks like she has some fire in her," Kisame remarked, his gaze predatory. "She should be fun to play with."

Erin's eyes widened in pure and undiluted terror as she stared in shock at the two men before her, all the blood draining out of her face in the process as the bottom dropped out of her stomach. That phrase could only mean one of two things, and neither of those options were even remotely pleasant to think about. She needed to get out of there… and fast.

Without a word, and obeying the little voice in the back of her mind that had been screaming at her to run like hell for some time now, the teenager promptly bolted away from the two men. Erin barely even made it a few yards before a strangely-shaped knife buried itself up to its hilt in the soft dirt right in front of her, effectively stopping her in her tracks. Then nineteen-year old spun around to stare at Itachi, whose arm was still out in a throwing position, before she whipped back around and shot off into the trees surrounding her.

'_This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening!!'_ Erin thought desperately as she hurtled through the wet undergrowth, not caring about the fact that she was leaving behind a trail that a blind bear could follow. All that mattered to her at that moment was getting as far away from the two men as humanly possible.

Erin cursed loudly as her foot landed on a wet patch of stone and flew out from under her, sending the teenager flat on her face into the dirt. The nineteen-year old lay there for a few moments, spitting out the mouthful of soil that she had somehow obtained, before something told her that she needed to move out of the way, **now**. The girl immediately rolled away just as a bandaged broadsword slammed down into the dirt where she had been lying only a few minutes beforehand, and she heard the sound of Kisame letting out a frustrated growl.

"Brat has better reflexes than I thought," he groused out loud, and Erin took his brief moment of distraction as an opportunity to get to her feet and start running again. This time, she chose the hardest possible path to take in order to make it more difficult for her pursuers. Instead, Kisame's laugh echoed all around her almost mockingly, and Erin thought that she caught sight of a dark blur keeping pace with her up in the trees out of the corner of her eye.

'_Wha-?'_ the girl wondered hesitantly as she ran like her life depended upon it before her eyes widened in realization. _'No way! That bastard's running up __**in**__ the trees!! What the hell?!'_

"Damn it!" Erin growled as she scrambled over a fallen log, her lungs starting to burn for the continued exertion on her part. Now she knew what the shark-man's plan probably was; once she had exhausted herself, he would come in for the kill. And judging for the size of the sword that he had attempted to use on her a few minutes earlier, there wasn't a chance in hell of her possibly surviving.

With a muttered curse, the nineteen-year old pretended to have problems continuing running, purposely stumbling as though at the end of her endurance. Just as Kisame dropped down from the trees behind her and raised his broadsword up for the final strike, Erin promptly threw herself into a narrow gap underneath a heavy thicket of thorn bushes.

Now, normally if you want to go run into a thorn bush, it's not supposed to have huge spikes that could double as pocket knives. It's also not advisable to try and grab a branch from said bush, and end up with three-inch long thorns stuck into your palm.

For some reason, Kisame didn't get this memo, nor did he actually notice said thorns until they were already imbedded firmly in his hand.

A furious expletive, followed by a howl of pain, split the air as Erin crawled along on her stomach underneath the thick shield of thorns. The nineteen-year old didn't care about all of the dirt that she was getting on her clothes as she finally managed to pull herself out from underneath the hedge, her entire body shaking from a combination of fear and whatever had caused her to pass out earlier.

"I… I need to get out of here," she murmured as she glanced back behind her towards where Kisame was, still cussing up a blue streak as he pulled thorns out of his hand. Erin spun around to start running again, only to let out a strangled choking noise as she was swiftly seized by her throat and slammed up against the very **hard** trunk of a nearby tree by Itachi.

The man's spinning red eyes seemed to bore into her very soul as he glared at her, an impassive expression on the rest of his face.

"You're not going anywhere, brat," he stated coldly. Erin squirmed about frantically in his grasp, clawing at his wrist in an attempt to get the strange man to release her.

"Let… go!" she gasped out, her vision starting to spin about wildly from the lack of oxygen.

"No."

It was at that moment that self-preservation took hold, and the nineteen-year old promptly rammed her knee as hard as she could up into Itachi's groin. The renegade ninja let out a gasp as he crumpled; automatically releasing his prisoner so he could hold onto his damaged… boys.

Erin didn't notice this, much less did she care, as she stumbled backwards while holding her throat. Without any further words, the teenager whipped around and took off like a shot, and this time, she didn't have any unwanted followers.

--

Hi there! I'm Wandering Hitokiri, and this is my first Naruto fanfic, so please be nice if I got any details wrong. Actually, I'm new to the Naruto fandom in general, having just discovered it a few weeks ago after being introduced to it properly by my best friend **Samurai Rin 63**. My general opinion? It's pretty cool!

Anyways, if I get some of the details or spellings wrong, please feel free to politely tell me, that way I can avoid similar mistakes in the future. -

**Edward Elric:** And why haven't you finished 'What One May Never See' yet? I thought that you promised yourself that you'd finish it before you started up on anything else.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Umm… heh heh… I don't suppose that you'd be willing to back off and let me do my own thing?

**Ed:** Slacker.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Oh, and you're one to talk.

**Ed:** (Glares at WH) I just don't see what's so great about a bunch of weirdos who run around wearing metal headbands and disappearing in a puff of smoke.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Don't diss the ninjas!

**Ed:** I can diss whoever the hell I want!

**Wandering Hitokiri:** … Shut up, pipsqueak, before I sic Sasuke the Emo boy on you.

**Sasuke:** (Just stares at WH like she's lost her mind)

**Ed:** (Rolls eyes) Oh, I **quiver** with fear.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Growls and snaps her fingers, causing Ed to disappear) Go back to your own damn fandom! Bossy little brat.

**Sasuke:** …I am not emo.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Groans and starts smacking her head repeatedly against a conveniently-placed wall) Me and my big mouth.

**Sasuke:** (Rolls eyes) Wandering Hitokiri does not own _Naruto_, _Fullmetal Alchemist_, or the song "It's All Over" by _Three Days Grace_. She's just a college student with an overactive imagination, and way too much time on her hands.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Hey!! That's not true! I didn't have time to work on anything for over a month because of my finals!!

**Sasuke:** … You're just like the moron.

Addition: I decided to rewrite several of the chapters that are already up, changing what needs to be a little more in-depth, to make the story flow better.


	2. Chapter Two: Confusing What is Real

Chapter Two:

**Chapter Two:**

**Confusing What Is Real**

It was over an hour after her unfortunate encounter with Itachi and Kisame when Erin finally stumbled upon signs of civilization. The exhausted teenager stared at the town in front of her in shock; she had never seen anything like this before in the area around her college.

"What the hell?" she murmured, her hazel eyes side as she stared incredulously at the town. Actually, it wasn't so much as the town that shocked her as it was the several hundred foot high wall that surrounded it.

"Okay, this is now officially weird," the teen grumbled as she took off her baseball cap and ran a hand through her tawny-colored hair. "I mean, is this some kind of tourist trap or something?"

'_Or maybe it has something to do with those two whack jobs back in the woods,'_ a little voice in the back of her mind nagged. Erin frowned as she shoved the thought out of her mind; she still wasn't quite sure what the hell had happened back there, and she wasn't too keen on finding out either.

'_For all I know, those two could've been mass murders or something,'_ she reasoned with a slight shrug. _'Then again, they could've been a couple of frat boys who like scaring the shit out of freshmen just for fun.'_

The idea just seemed so ridiculous that Erin couldn't even believe that she had thought of it.

"Yeah right," the nineteen-year old muttered out loud as she made a harsh scoffing noise in the back of her throat. She looked back over at the town again before she finally made up her mind.

"You know what? Screw it. This place can't be any worse than here, and at least there are probably other people there too," she reasoned. "I can find out where the hell I am and get directions back to the dorms. Once I've done that, then I can go back and just sleep."

Nodding in satisfaction at her simple and to the point plan, Erin took a step forward, forgetting that she had been standing on a hill with a steep incline. The teenager's eyes widened at the sudden realization of what was going to happen just as her foot came down on nothing but air, and she was promptly sent tumbling head over heels down the steep slope.

A plethora of colorful and highly inappropriate phrases were launched out of the nineteen-year old's mouth as she tumbled over rocks, tree roots, and at one point, even going through a thorn bush. By the time that Erin finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, she was covered in scratches, and her entire body was sore.

"Damn it," she hissed as she slowly got to her feet, grabbing her 'FBI' cap from where it had fallen off her head a few feet away. "That's what I get for being such a klutz."

The teenager winced as she slowly dusted herself off, getting rid of the worst of the dirt and plant matter that clung to her. She was definitely going to be feeling those bruises in a few hours. Erin flinched as a loud crack of thunder sounded behind her, and she glanced up at the heavy gray clouds that hung overhead.

"Great, more rain," she muttered darkly, her expression slightly wane. She didn't know how long she had been out in the woods, but she could already feel that the Motrin that she had taken earlier was beginning to fade. With a sigh, the nineteen-year old adjusted the straps on her backpack before she set off in the direction of the dirt path she had caught sight off when she had been at the top of the hill.

It took a few minutes, but the teenager was finally able to push her way through the thick undergrowth with a minimal amount of cursing. Erin scowled yet again as she looked at the dirt road for several moments before she shrugged and set off towards the town that she had spotted earlier, although it was now mostly hidden from view by the massive trees that towered over her. The nineteen-year old let out a low whistle of awe at the sheer size of the foliage surrounding her. She had never seen anything like this before.

Just before she rounded a curve in the path, Erin tripped over a protruding rock and promptly fell flat on her face with a loud curse. The girl gave a low growl as she pushed herself up out of the dirt, her expression one of absolute fury; she seemed to be falling on her face a lot today, and she was getting sick of it.

Suddenly, there was a brief flicker of movement off to her left that Erin caught out of the corner of her eye, before she froze. The nineteen-year old felt a cold shiver of fear go down her spine as she swallowed nervously, the skin of her throat just barely touching against the frigid steel of the knife blade that was currently held up against her throat by a strange-looking man.

"Shit," she whispered hoarsely, her eyes wide in fear. And just when she thought that she had ditched her **last** attackers.

"I wouldn't move if I were you," the man advised in a no-nonsense tone. "My hand just might… slip… if you do."

It was all Erin could do not to lose any and all self-control that she still had at the moment as she made a small noise indicating that she understood. The man gave a snort just as another man came running up the dirt path, presumably the first man's partner.

"Shiro, what the hell are you doing?!" the older man yelped, his dark eyes narrowed as he ran up to 'Shiro' and the thoroughly terrified teenager that he was currently restraining.

"I'm capturing a spy that might possibly be here to-"

Shiro was cut off in mid-statement as the other man immediately smacked him upside the head before he pushed him away from Erin.

"No, idiot! What you're currently doing is scaring the hell out of one of the Academy students!!" the black-haired man growled angrily as he pulled the girl to her feet. "Iruka will have my hide if he finds out that some wet-behind-the-ears Chuunin under **my** command attacked one of his precious students!!"

Erin had absolutely no idea who the hell Iruka was, but she was immensely grateful to him at that moment. If these two guys thought that she was from the Academy that the one currently defending her had mentioned, well… she definitely wasn't about to correct them. Especially since it had just saved her from having her throat slit. Shiro looked properly chastised as he nervously rubbed the back of his head where he had been hit.

"My apologies, Hajime-san. I guess I overreacted a little…" Shiro admitted reluctantly as he stood up. Hajime gave the younger man a piercing glare before he redirected his attention to Erin, who was currently trembling like a leaf in his grasp. The older man shot Shiro a look that plainly said 'see what you did?' as he tried to calm the nineteen-year old down.

"Forgive my subordinate, he's still a little new to guard duty," he said in a noticeably calmer tone, giving Erin a reassuring smile. "Just last week he threw some kunai at a rabbit thinking it was an enemy."

Erin gave a weak grin at this statement, relaxing just a little. Hajime noticed this, and placed what he hoped would be a comforting hand on the teenager's shoulder as he gently guided her down the path.

"So, what is a girl your age doing outside the village walls without your team?" he queried. "I thought that you were an Academy student at first, but you look like you're about thirteen, so that would make you a Gennin."

Erin twitched slightly at the 'thirteen' remark, but managed to keep her temper under control. She **hated** it when people thought that she was younger than she really was, especially when they assumed that she was in junior high when she was really in college. If she had to take a guess, she would have to say that it had something to do with the fact that she had a 'youthful face', at least according to Jess. But that still didn't stop her from getting pissed off when some idiot asked her if she was lost while on campus.

The teen frowned slightly as she stared at the path ahead of her. She had absolutely no idea what a 'Gennin' was though, so she just made up an excuse that she hoped wouldn't get her into too much trouble.

"I… I hopped the wall on a bet," she finally said, hesitating as though she were afraid of the scolding she thought she was about to get. Hajime let out a sigh and rolled his eyes as they finally came to the main gates that Erin had spotted from the hilltop earlier, patting the nineteen-year old on the back.

The teenager winced when she caught sight of the wall that surrounded the area, silently cursing herself for saying that she had hopped the wall. It was well over a hundred feet in height, with nothing but a steep drop. There was no way in hell that Hajime was going to by her bullshit story about jumping the wall on a bet!!

To her immense surprise, the older man said nothing about her (to her) blatantly obvious lie.

"Well, just don't do something like that again, okay?" the black-haired man stated as he resumed his post by the open gate doors. "You could get into serious trouble next time."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Erin muttered faintly as she stared at the entrance before Hajime motioned her inside the gates. If the man wasn't going to call her up on the carpet for making up that bullshit excuse, she sure as heck wasn't going to say anything about it.

"You'd better get back inside before your sensei or teammates spot you," he warned. The nineteen-year old gave him a smile of thanks as she walked through the gates, pointedly ignoring the irritated look that Shiro shot in her direction.

Erin waited until she had wandered a few blocks away from the massive gates before she broke into a trot as a steady drizzle started up once again.

--

"Okay, it is now official. I **hate** rain," Erin grumbled darkly as she trudged through the damp streets of the town that she had entered, her baseball cap pulled down low over her face to help protect her from the rain that was now pouring down out of the sky in buckets.

She had been wandering about aimlessly for about half an hour, and attracting strange looks from passers-by the entire time. Apparently, judging from what everyone else was wearing, her clothes were far from normal. A good two-thirds of the girls and women that she had seen were wearing kimonos, and those that weren't wearing kimonos were garbed in some form of tight shorts and top with a pouch strapped around their thigh.

'_What the hell __**is**__ this place?'_ the nineteen-year old wondered as she paused at a shop window to try and read a sign, only to find that it was written in what looked to her like Chinese. _'I mean, I can't even read the damn street signs! How they hell do they expect someone to finds their way about this bloody place if they write everything in Chi-fricken-nese?! It might even be Japanese for all I know!!'_

"This sucks," Erin growled angrily as she tried to calm down, knowing that losing her temper wouldn't help her in the least. She was cold, wet, tired, hungry, and irritated, and she was almost positive of the fact that she was getting sick because she kept having dizzy spells every few minutes.

'_Stupid finals, stupid essay, stupid rain,'_ the teenager growled mentally as she continued her way down the street, her mood darkening by the minute. _'Stupid psychotic freaks who try to kill you as soon as look at you, stupid seniors, stupid frat boys…'_

Erin was snapped out of her internal threats as a tantalizing smell wafted towards her, and at the exact same moment her stomach gave a loud growl. The nineteen-year old turned an interesting shade of red as she glanced down at her stomach and gave an embarrassed laugh.

"I should probably get something to eat before I do anything else," she realized as she turned around and followed the smell of whatever it was. She'd probably feel a lot better once she had something to eat. Whatever was producing the tantalizing odor that she was currently following smelled heavenly, and Erin felt herself begin to drool at the thought of lunch.

The teenager immediately straightened up as she forced herself to stop thinking about food, instead following the smell all the way to a sit-down vendor of some kind. Erin slowly walked under the foldable overhang and took a seat at one of the stools by the countertop, looking around her with obvious interest.

There was already another man sitting there, clearly enjoying his food as he used chopsticks to slurp up a long trail of noodles from his bowl filled with some kind of broth. He had longish messy dark brown hair held up in a high ponytail and a thin scar across the bridge of his nose, and was wearing a green vest with a black turtleneck and pants. Erin judged that he probably wasn't too much older than her, since he looked like he was in about his early twenties.

"Can I help you?" a cheerful voice suddenly chirped from behind Erin, and the teen almost shot about a foot in the air from fright before she turned around to see a woman in her early to mid-twenties standing behind the counter with a bright smile on her face.

"Umm… yeah, I'd like some lunch," Erin stammered nervously before mentally smacking herself upside the head at her own stupidity. She needed to be specific, not have the woman think that she was a headcase!

"Is this your first time here at the Ichiraku ramen shop, hon?" the brown-haired woman asked kindly, and Erin forced herself not to make some smart-ass comment about how she was nineteen. Taking off other people's heads just because she wasn't feeling too hot wasn't nice, and besides, this woman didn't know how crappy her day had been.

"Yeah," she admitted before she realized that she actually knew what ramen was. "I'd like a beef ramen then."

"Coming right up."

The nineteen-year old waited until the waitress had her attention focused on the stove in the back of the stand before she shook her head and gave a wry chuckle. How could she have not known what ramen was? It was practically Jess's food of choice, and the best friend to starving college students everywhere!

"So, this is your first time here, huh?" the man sitting next to her said suddenly, and Erin looked over at him curiously.

"Yeah…"

"Sorry, that's just kind of surprising to me. Most kids your age have eaten here at least once, and I know someone who comes here pretty much every day," the man commented as he peered closely at her. "Are you new around here? I thought that I knew all the kids that have gone through the Academy, but I don't recognize you."

Erin froze at this statement, her eyes widening slightly, just as the waitress came up and set her order of ramen in front of her.

"Here you go," she said cheerfully before handing the teenager a small slip of paper. "Your total comes to four hundred yen."

"I'm just passing through," Erin remarked to the man as she took the small slip of paper and examined it.

The nineteen-year old's eye twitched slightly at the figure as she reached for her wallet, pulling it out of her jeans pocket and opening it up. She knew she had a couple twenties in there… wait a second, wasn't yen some kind of Asian currency?

Erin gave a mental shrug as she pulled out what should have been a ten dollar bill, only to stare at it in surprise when she realized that it had changed into some odd-colored bill with the amount '1000' printed on it, as well as a funny-looking 'Y' symbol next to it. The teenager stared at it for a few second before she handed it to the woman, who thanked her and gave her six hundred yen as her change.

'_Okay, I am now officially freaked out here,'_ the girl thought shakily as she put her change into the coin pouch on her wallet. _'How the heck can over sixty American dollars just magically change into some kind of foreign currency?! When I get back to the dorms, I'm going to see about getting a psych evaluation! This is nuts!'_

The teenager reached over to snag a pair of chopsticks from the container on the counter, pulling them out of the paper slip that covered them and pulled them apart with a snap. After rubbing them against each other for a little bit to remove any potential splinters, Erin silently brought them together in her right hand and used the pieces of wood to snag a slice of beef sitting on top of the noodles. She had just put the meat in her mouth when the man sitting next to her spoke to her again.

"So, where are you from then? I don't think that I've ever seen a kunoichi wear clothing like yours before," the brown-haired man remarked. Erin glanced over at him as she finished chewing the beef before she swallowed, her brow slightly furrowed in confusion. There was that word 'kunoichi' again.

"I'm from Portland. I'm going to school at the university there right now, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not a kunoichi, whatever that is," she stated as she used her chopsticks to grab some ramen noodles, not noticing the man's confused look, as well as the slight frown that crossed his face.

"Port… land? Where is that? Is it in the Land of Waves?" the man queried. This time, it was Erin's turn to arch an eyebrow as she gave the man a disbelieving look.

"No, it's in Oregon," she pointed out before she returned her attention to her food. "And like I said earlier, I'm a student at the university there."

The man just stared at her for several seconds, watching the teenager slurp down ramen, before he said anything.

"So, you're a student then?"

"Yeah."

"That's interesting, seeing as I'm one of the instructors over at the Academy here," the man commented. "My name is Iruka Umino by the way."

So this was the guy that the guards at the gate had been talking about. Erin's eyebrows arched all the way up into her hairline as she stared at the man before she realized that the poor guy's parents had probably had a sick sense of humor. And she thought that **she** had been teased for her name.

"Nice to meet you. My name's Erin Cody."

Iruka gave her an odd look as he finished up the last of his ramen. "Er…rin? That's an odd name. And your surname is… unique."

"Hey, it's not my fault that the immigration officer on duty couldn't spell my dad's last name worth crap when he came to here from Ireland over twenty years ago," the nineteen-year old grumbled as she sucked up some more noodles. "Stupid bastard. Anyway, my dad said that the idiot got so frustrated with trying to spell his name that he just wrote down 'Cody' and told my dad that was his new last name."

"That's an interesting story," Iruka remarked. "So your father… came from another country?"

"Yeah, Ireland. My mom's an American citizen, born and raised, so she didn't have to worry about any of the name-mix-up crap that my dad had to deal with."

Iruka stared at the teenager sitting next to him in interest, thoughts whirling through his mind at a million miles an hour. These places that this girl had mentioned… he had never heard of them before, and she was obviously a foreigner. It was possible that she was a latecomer for the Chuunin exam, but somehow he doubted it.

The Hokage needed to be alerted of this fact immediately.

--

Little did Iruka know that the conversation, as well as Erin's impromptu arrival in the forest and her encounter with Itachi, had all been observed by the Third Hokage in his crystal ball. The elderly man stared into the clear orb at the events taking place before he made his decision; there was something odd about this girl, and possibly even dangerous. Action needed to be taken immediately.

The Hokage directed his gaze to the Anbu guard standing by the window before he issued his orders.

"I want you to alert all Jounin not involved with the Chuunin exam that we have a possible spy here in the village, and that she needs to be retrieved and brought back to me. The target is a strangely-dressed girl in her early teens, and she's currently at the Ichiraku Ramen Shop. There's a good possibility that she has no idea as to what's going on, so try not to scare her too badly."

The masked Anbu ninja gave a curt nod as he disappeared out the open window, and the Third let out a weary sigh as he returned his attention the crystal ball on his desk to watch the events that were about to take place unfold.

--

"Oh, Iruka, do you know where I could get a map of the area or something?" Erin asked the older man as she swallowed the last of her noodles. Iruka cast a suspicious look in the teenager's direction, a dark eyebrow arching up in surprise at the girl's request.

"Why do you need a map?" he asked. Erin gave him a look that plainly said 'you honestly can't be **that** stupid' as she fiddled with a stray piece of carrot floating about in her broth that she hadn't eaten yet.

"'Cause some morons at my school thought that they'd get a kick out of leaving me out in the middle of the woods after I blacked out after finishing one of my final exams, and I **really** want to get back to my dorm before nightfall so my roommate doesn't have a heart attack," she replied darkly as she glared at the hapless soup broth in front of her. Iruka stared at her in shock, his jaw dropping as he gaped open-mouthed at the nineteen-year old.

"You blacked out?" he asked incredulously, causing Erin to roll her eyes as she looked over at him.

"Didn't I just say that?"

"Well, yes… but how do you know that someone did that to you?"

"How else would I wake up in the middle of the woods when I **know** that I passed out at my school?" the teenager retorted before she set her chopsticks down and crossed her arms over her chest, her expression darkening. "When I get my hands on those jackasses, they are going to be in a **world** of hurt."

"Hmm… that could be interesting to see," a strange voice remarked suddenly behind her, and Erin whirled around to see a strange man wearing the same outfit that Iruka had on standing behind her, as well as a headband with a metal plate sewn onto it. A smoldering cigarette poked out of the corner of his mouth as he stared down at her, and the teen felt a cold trail of fear go down her spine as her eyes landed upon the insignia etched onto the metal.

It was the same one that she had seen on Itachi's headband earlier when he had slammed her up against a tree.

'_Oh __**shit**__.'_

Erin's reaction was instantaneous. She promptly knocked her bowl of still-hot ramen broth into the man's face, (actually, to be more precise, she threw it), and bolted out of her seat, snagging her backpack by one of its straps as she dashed out into the rain that was now pouring down outside.

The nineteen-year old made it approximately ten steps away from the ramen shop before she ran face-first into the chest another person, this one a lanky man with long silver hair that somehow managed to defy gravity. He was also wearing the same black shirt/pants and green vest combination that Iruka and the other man had on, and his headband was pulled down over his left eye, not to mention the fact that he was wearing a mask that covered the entire lower portion of his face. His hand immediately snapped out and encircled her wrist, effectively restraining the now-frightened teenager.

"Now now, that wasn't very nice," he drawled as Erin tried to yank her hand out of his grasp. "We just want to talk to you."

"Let me go!!" the teen snarled as she lashed out and kicked the man in the shin. His visible eye widened slightly, but other than that, her attack had no affect on him.

"Kakashi, hold onto that little hellion!" the man that Erin had thrown her ramen at hollered as he wiped the last of the hot liquid from his eyes and spat out his now-soggy, beef ramen-flavored cigarette. "The Hokage won't be too happy if we lose her!"

At the mention of the fact that someone else had ordered her capture, a low cry of fear emerged from the girl's throat as she frantically raised her free hand up and swiped at 'Kakashi's' face, fully intending on scratching him with her nails. The man's eye widened in surprise as he immediately let go of the nineteen-year old's wrist and dodged the blow. Erin didn't pay any attention as to how he had managed this as she spun around and bolted off down a nearby alley, her mind more focused on fleeing than thinking.

She didn't notice the small photograph that fell out of her jacket pocket as she ran off, nor did she see the silver-haired man stoop down and pick it up, his eye narrowing slightly as he examined the image closely.

--

Erin growled out a long and detailed stream of expletives as she ran as fast as she could through the mud-slicked streets and winding alleys of the town that she was in, desperately trying to avoid all of the people currently pursuing her. It seemed like every time she turned a corner, there were another three people trying to catch her.

'_I need to get out of here!'_ she realized as she slid around yet another corner within the endless maze of alleyways.

The teenager cursed as she slipped and fell down flat on her face, landing right in the mud. A low sound of aggravation echoed from within her throat as she pushed herself to her feet and took off yet again, determined not to let all of the adults chasing her capture her. She wasn't about to go down without a fight!

Several kunai imbedded themselves in the mud right in front of her, and Erin yelped out yet another profanity as she barely managed to dodge the spot. Someone gave a shout of irritation as whatever trap they had set went off on the people behind Erin, and the fleeing teenager managed a wry grin as she left some of her pursuers behind.

Unfortunately, she still had countless more after her.

"This… has to be… a dream!" the nineteen-year old gasped out as she chanced a glance behind her to see how many people were still following her. "This can't be ha-AHHH!!"

Erin let out a startled yell as she tripped over someone's foot that they had stuck out from behind the corner of a wall, and she promptly fell flat onto her face for the umpteenth time that day, her baseball cap tumbling off her head and landing in the mud in front of her.

"I'm not quite sure what you're running from, but it'll be easier on all of us if you just give it a rest already," a familiar voice remarked lazily, and the girl looked behind her to see the same silver-haired man that she had kicked earlier leaning up against the wall with his foot still extended.

Erin immediately scrabbled backwards, trying to remove herself away from the man as far as possible, her hazel-green eyes wide in fear and her cap completely forgotten.

"What do you want with me?!" she demanded anxiously as she groped behind her furiously for a wall of any kind, praying that she'd be able to disappear down a corner before the man tried to go after her. "I didn't do anything, so why are you after me?!"

The silver-haired Jounin stared at her silently, and the teenager could almost see the frown on his face beneath his concealing mask. The second she tried to scoot to the side and stand up, the man's dark eye immediately snapped over to her, the half-lidded orb somehow managing to look both lazy and serious at the same time.

"Who are you?" he stated simply, shooting the teenager a look that said plainly that he wasn't going to accept any answers other than the one he wanted. Erin shivered slightly at the hidden intensity; it was completely unlike anything she had ever encountered before. He seemed almost… angry.

And here she had thought that things couldn't get any worse. Now apparently her very existence offended the man in front of her, and he belonged with the rest of the people currently out after her blood that all seemed to have a perverse love of throwing sharp pointy objects at unknowing college students.

The teenager scooted backwards a few more inches in an attempt to keep as much distance between her and the older man as possible before her back collided with a wall, and she realized that she was trapped. The closest corner to the next alleyway was at least three feet away from her, and she could hear some of the other people who had been chasing her get closer. If she didn't do something, and fast, she'd be captured within the next minute. Unless…

Making a split-second decision, Erin suddenly scooped up a massive handful of the muck around her and flung it at the lanky ninja before she scrambled to her feet, not even stopping to see if she had managed to hit him in the face like she had been hoping to as she booked it out of there, running as though the hounds of Hell were right on her heels. Unfortunately for her, the silver-haired man didn't even blink as he simply stepped out of the way to avoid the sludge pitched at him, and arched a silvery eyebrow at the teenager's fleeing back.

"Hmm… interesting," he mused quietly as he stooped down to pick up the girl's dropped FBI cap, looking the soaked and muddy object over speculatively for a few seconds before he pulled out a kunai and nicked his thumb.

--

By the time that Erin finally made it out of the village, with several shallow cuts on her face and hands from barely avoided kunai, as well as the severe misfortune of being smeared liberally from head to toe with mud, it was almost nightfall, and the rain still hadn't let up. The nineteen-year old growled several highly inappropriate phrases under her breath as she made her way through the thick undergrowth in the forest.

"I can't believe that I'm back here," the teenager muttered darkly as she cast a glance over her shoulder to make sure that no one was following her. "But given the choice between two people who want to kill me out in the woods, and an entire village of people who are after me, I think that I'd rather take the woods any day."

Erin scowled as she pushed aside a thorn bush from her path, and then cursed when she let go of the plant and it whipped backwards, catching her in the face.

"Son of a-!" the nineteen-year old began, only to cut herself off in mid-profanity as she bit down on her lip. She really didn't want to advertise to everyone out there where she was, no matter how upset she was. It seemed to be roughly along the lines of mooning the SWAT team and then expecting to not get shot.

Both ideas seemed just as suicidal, although pissing off the SWAT team seemed a whole lot less dangerous. At least SWAT couldn't disappear in a puff of smoke.

"I **hate** this place!" she hissed instead, wincing as she gently felt the lovely set of scratches that she had just acquired. "I swear to God that I'll never come back here again, **ever**!!"

Erin grumbled a few choice words under her breath as she pushed forward, her hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets as she trembled slightly from a combination of prolonged exposure to the elements and exhaustion. At one point, a branch snapped somewhere off to her left, causing the teen to jump about a mile high before she realized that it was nothing more than a weird-looking raccoon.

The nineteen-year old pushed herself onward for a few more minutes before she finally decided to take a short break, and took shelter underneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. Shivering slightly for reasons unknown to her, Erin huddled up against the base of the tree among its spreading roots, setting her backpack down besides her.

"D-damn it, I have no fucking idea where I am anymore…" she chattered as she curled up into a ball, hugging her legs close to her body for more warmth. "Hell, I don't even think that I'm still in Oregon anymore, much less the United States. Where am I, and what's going on?"

The teenager was somewhere between terrified out of her mind, and mad. One part of her wanted to burst into tears at the apparent insanity of the situation and curl up in a little ball, praying that she'd wake up soon, while the other part wanted to punch something and spout off every obscenity that possibly came to mind. Unfortunately neither of these options would be much help to her, and the fact that she was dead tired and soaking wet didn't help her much in the way of coherent thoughts either.

"I hate this place," the nineteen-year old muttered defiantly, as though voicing her thoughts would somehow make the dreary landscape around her less real. "Once I get out of here, the first thing I'm gonna do is take a long** hot** shower, and then I'm gonna sleep through the entire weekend. Well, maybe I'll get up to eat something every now and then… maybe I can bug Jess into making some sausage and white bean soup."

Erin let out a long sigh as she reached up and ran a hand through her soaked bangs, trying to unplaster them from her face. A wane smile crossed her face as she pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knees.

"Heh, I probably sound like such a little kid right now," she mumbled as she stared out into the darkness around her. "But… all I really want to do is go home. I don't care if I wake up in the dorm or in my room at home… I just want to be anywhere but here…"

Erin stayed in this position for several minutes, staring unseeingly out into the darkness surrounding her as she tried to figure out a way to get out of the colossal mess that she had somehow landed in. A small frown crossed her face as she started to get dizzy again, and it suddenly seemed as though the temperature around her dropped by several degrees.

"Fuck, not again," she growled as she reached up and ran a hand through her long bangs, blinking several times in rapid succession in an attempt to clear her vision. When that didn't work, the teenager silently tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ears as she shifted about in her seat and waited for her vision to clear.

The nineteen-year old muttered several profanities that would have made her mother go ballistic as the dizzy spell finally went away, and she promptly reached inside her backpack to grab the Motrin bottle, and her bottle of water. Popping two tablets into her mouth and following them with a large mouthful of water, Erin capped both containers and returned them to her backpack.

A frown crossed her face as she forced herself to get to her feet, a weary groan unintentionally escaping from her lips as she slung her mud-spattered backpack back over her shoulders.

"I need to keep moving; otherwise those people from that town might catch up with me."

Automatically Erin reached up to adjust her hat, only to realize that she had never picked it back up after that silver-haired ninja had tripped her. The teenager's right eye suddenly developed a nervous twitch as she clenched and unclenched her hands angrily, biting down on her lower lip firmly in an attempt to keep from filling the air around her with ear-scorching curses. Finally, she managed calm down enough that she was only able to grit out her displeasure.

"Damn it, that was my favorite hat," she hissed angrily before she let out a frustrated sigh. "Wonderful. Now I have nothing to cover my head."

The nineteen-year old resisted the temptation to go off on another cussing tangent as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently reasoning that losing her temper wouldn't help things in the least. Once she felt reasonably calm, she adjusted the position of her backpack and headed off in the direction she knew was opposite of the village she had just come from.

Erin opted to just walk at a steady pace so she wouldn't wear herself out any more than she already had. Unfortunately, after half an hour of trudging through a seemingly endless expanse of forest, and pouring rain, she was flat-out exhausted. Being sick as a dog and steadily feeling worse the further she went didn't help matters much either.

With a weary groan, the teenager shed her backpack and tossed it under the biggest tree she could find before she flopped down next to it, ignoring the stray drops of water that fell down on her through the thick canopy of leaves.

"I'm so tired," she whispered as she leaned up against the massive trunk behind her and allowed her eyes to slowly slid shut. "I'll just close my eyes… for a few minutes. I'll feel better when I wake up…"

The nineteen-year old was somewhere between being out cold and fairly awake when she felt something warm and wet sniff her hand. She groaned and shoved whatever it was away from her before she shifted in her spot, turning her face away from the wet-nosed menace. Unfortunately, less than ten seconds later the wet-nosed something moved over to where her face was and proceeded to start licking her face.

Erin gasped as she instinctively jerked away from the thing that had decided to give her face a bath and found herself staring wide-eyed at a dog at least as big as Cuchulainn. The thing looked like it had some Collie in it, if the orange and white fur and triangular ears that flopped slightly at the tips were anything to go by. The teenager blinked as she regarded the massive canine in front of her in bemusement, before the soaking wet menace let out a happy bark and shoved its head in her face, wagging its tail like mad as it eagerly licked her face.

Sputtering weakly as she shoved the animal away from her, the nineteen-year old scrubbed her arm across her face to remove any traces of slobber before she looked back up at the obviously friendly dog. He had a length of blue fabric tied around his neck as an obvious makeshift collar, and was also wearing some sort of blue vest, probably one of the ones that anyone could get at PetSmart and put on their poor dog. Erin had always figured that dogs didn't need clothes if they had fur, and some of those sweaters that other people put on their pets just screamed 'kill me now, I'm not even a dog any more', but the one this dog was wearing seemed to be okay for him.

"Hey there boyo. What are you doing out here?" the girl chuckled wearily as she held out her hand for the animal to sniff, and almost immediately had the canine's furry head shoved under her hand in an obvious demand for her to pet it. "You're a bossy one, aren't you?"

The massive dog let out a low, rumbling 'woof' in reply, and Erin couldn't help but smile as she began to obligingly scratch his ears, causing one of his back legs to motor away.

"Heh, you're just like my dog," the nineteen-year old muttered as she leaned back up against the tree, a small smile creeping across her face as the dog padded up next to her and flopped down, resting his head directly on her lap. The teenager let out a sigh of relief as she gently allowed her right hand to rest on the dog's back, savoring the warmth that came from the animal's body.

"Man, I'm so tired…" she whispered as she allowed her eyes to slide shut, exhaustion sweeping over her like a blanket. "I'll just go to sleep for a few minutes… I won't be so tired then…"

Within a minute of her closing her eyes, Erin was sound asleep.

The dog lay next to the girl, his brown eyes focused on the darkness surrounding them as his ears twitched slightly whenever a sound that he didn't recognize came from within the immediate area. The mixed breed let out a slow sigh as he kept a wary eye on the surrounding area, looking to all the world as though he were about to fall asleep as well.

The two stayed this way for over an hour before the orange and white dog got up and yawned, stretching out to his full length, before he gently nosed Erin on the cheek. The teenager merely curled up a little more in response, but other than that, did not move.

If a dog could have frowned, the dog would have as he regarded the still-sleeping girl intently. Making a low sound of annoyance in the back of his throat, the mixed breed stuck his nose into the crook of the nineteen-year old's neck, which made her give a low groan, but still didn't elicit any other form of acknowledgement from the teen.

It was about then that the dog noticed that Erin was trembling as she curled up into an even tighter ball, her breath coming in short, shaky gasps. A look of worry crossed the animal's face as he gently nudged the teenager once again and let out a low whine, but he still got no response.

Heaving an annoyed sigh, the dog sat back on his haunches and let out a long, throaty howl. Within moments an answering howl came back, and the orange and white-furred dog settled back down next to the unresponsive teenager to wait for the arrival of the others.

Not even a minute later, Kakashi landed a few feet away from the unconscious teen and his ninken, followed by the rest of his tracking dogs that he had summoned.

The Jounin frowned slightly as he walked over towards where one of his summons stood and his visible eye locked onto where Erin still lay, completely dead to the world. He had sent his ninken out after the teen's scent to see if he could catch the girl off guard at a later time, and hopefully bring her in for questioning. Instead, he found himself out in the middle of the woods with an unconscious girl, and absolutely no clue as to why she wasn't responding.

'_She's probably only a little older than Sakura or Naruto,'_ Kakashi realized as he crouched down next to Erin and examined her closely. _'And she is definitely not a shinobi. That might explain why she acted the way she did, but still… she didn't become violent until she saw our headbands. I wonder why?'_

"You are one strange little girl," he muttered thoughtfully as he reached down and gently held the girl's wrist in between his forefinger and thumb to take her pulse, completely oblivious to the fact that if said 'little girl' had been awake to hear his statement, she would have promptly taken his head off. Kakashi frowned underneath his mask as he felt the teenager's erratic pulse, and arched an eyebrow as he looked down at the teen's face thoughtfully.

"That's not good," the Jounin stated as he let go of Erin's wrist and pressed his hand against her forehead. Kakashi's visible eye widened as he stared down at the nineteen-year old's flushed face before he removed his hand with a soft curse. It was no small wonder that she wasn't waking up, judging from how high the girl's temperature was at the moment.

Kakashi briefly wondered how someone so sick could manage to cause so much havoc, not to mention it was unbelievable that she had managed to make it this far from Konoha without collapsing. The twenty-six-year old was snapped out of his internal musings when Erin started shivering once again, and began muttering something unintelligible under her breath. He frowned slightly, but realized that there was really no other option for him to take as he released his ninken, and they all disappeared in a puff of smoke.

With a sigh, the Copy Ninja gently scooped the unconscious girl up into his arms, holding her close to his chest as he threw her backpack over his shoulder. It looked like the teenager would have to receive medical attention before the Hokage could question her. With that thought, Kakashi leapt up into the trees and began to make his way back towards Konoha.

--

Well people, here's my second chapter. Umm… don't hurt me?

And no, there is no way in **hell** that this is going to turn into some lovey-dovey, Mary-Sueish romance crock of crap. That will happen over my dead body and there are already more than enough of those evil things floating around on FFnet.

Mary-Sues are the Anti-Christ. (Thinks for a few seconds and smirks evilly) Actually, I think I know how to get rid of them. (Drums fingers together diabolically) There might actually be a use for Itachi and Envy yet.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Turns around and looks at afore-mentioned characters) Oh boyyyys…

**Envy:** Oh shit, she's smiling. That **can't** be good.

**Itachi:** Why are you so worried? She's only one person, and she's not even a ninja. Not to mention the fact that she's just a scrawny teenage girl that's in college.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Twitches)

**Envy:** (Stares at Itachi like he's insane) You don't know her very well, do you?

**Itachi:** … why should I care?

**Envy:** Because she can control your entire reality at the moment, you twit. (Rolls eyes) You know, for someone that's supposed to be a child prodigy, you really are stupid.

**Itachi:** You're going to die for that comment.

**Envy:** (Scoffs) I'm a homunculus. You can't kill me **that** easily.

(Itachi and Envy sense a murderous aura coming from behind them, and both turn around to see one very pissed off Wandering Hitokiri standing behind them with a katana drawn and in full Shinsengumi garb)

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Glares at Itachi) You are **toast**, weasel-boy! (Envy smirks at Itachi)

**Envy:** Well, it's been nice knowing you.

(Itachi runs off with Wandering Hitokiri hot on his heels, and soon screams and sounds of somebody being hit repeatedly are heard. Envy sweatdrops)

**Envy:** Oh-kaaaay, it looks like I'm going to have to do the disclaimer then. Wandering Hitokiri does not own _Naruto_, or any characters from _Fullmetal Alchemist_, including me. That honor belongs solely to their respectful owners. She does however own Erin, her brothers Tyler and Keith, and her 'friend' Jess, along with any other characters mentioned in this story that you don't recognize. (Sighs) I can't believe that I've been lowered to doing crap like this.

Reviews:

Lady Renvel of Arella: Thank you, I'm glad that you think so. I actually prefer the dubbed versions of 'Fullmetal Alchemist' and 'Naruto' myself, but that's just my personal preferences. I like to actually understand what's being said, and Vic Mignogna and whoever does Kakashi's voice just sound downright awesome in English! I know… I am one sad person, but I like me that way.

**Envy:** (Mutters) Sad? Insane is more like it.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Oh hush, otherwise I won't bring you back to do any more authors notes.

**Envy:** And what a joy that would be.

The Shadow111: I'm glad that you love 'What One May Never See'. It's my most successful fanfiction, and it really is a lot of fun to write. Unfortunately, I've kind of hit writers block on it, and I'm hoping that working on something else will help me get through my block. I accidentally got interested in 'Naruto' just by talking with my friend about some stuff on the phone, and I got curious and went on the internet, looked up a bunch of images, and checked out one of the episodes on YouTube. I was hooked almost immediately. But here's the really funny thing; I've been reading 'Naruto' for almost three years in 'Shonen Jump', and I just now got interested! Weird, huh?

rockleefan: Yes, Erin kneed Itachi in the balls. That's exactly the same thing that I would have done in her situation, and personally I think that the psychopath needs to be force-fed a bit of humble pie. Don't worry about Sasuke not seeing that, he'll get to hear about it later when Erin mentions her previous encounter with Itachi. Ooops! Umm… you didn't hear anything from me! Anyway, yeah it is pretty amazing that Erin's made it as far as she has without passing out again; isn't it interesting how far you can go by sheer stubbornness alone? Although I'm hardly one to talk; I went to school once when I was really sick, and I pushed myself to keep going and tried to make it through the entire day, even though I felt like crap. I passed out at my desk in the back during fourth period, and my teacher sent me to the nurse's office. By the time that the end of lunch hour rolled around, I was at home sitting on the couch with a thermometer stuck in my mouth and one hell of a nasty case of the flu.

TheCrazyScotswomanOfDOOM: Thank you, I'm glad that you liked it. I agree with you, Sasuke is definitely emo. He really needs to get a life… and I'm sorely tempted to smack some sense into him.

Liah Cauthon: Well, I was just going to have her run away from Itachi and Kisame, and leave it with Kisame having all those thorns in his hand, but it seemed like the chapter was missing something. Then I got the idea that 'Hey, I never really did anything with Itachi!', and so, Erin's final confrontation with the weasel-boy was born. And I think that it fits the bill of something that he would do too.


	3. Chapter Three: Hospital Havoc

Chapter Three:

**Chapter Three:**

**Hospital Havoc**

_Everything around her was dark. Erin frowned as she looked around her warily; this place was creeping her out._

_It was almost as though she had been locked in an endless dark room, with only the fact that she could __**feel**__ the ground beneath her feet to reassure her that she wasn't in another dark void._

"_Hello?" she called out hesitantly. "Is anybody here?"_

_The sound of footsteps softly approaching her came from behind the nineteen-year old, and she spun around to see a boy no older than thirteen or fourteen standing there, eyeing her speculatively. Erin arched an eyebrow as she stared at the black-haired boy in front of her; he looked like he was about the same age as Keith, her almost thirteen-year old brother._

"_Who're you?" she finally asked, and the boy gave her a toothy grin in response._

"_Why do you need to know?" he asked cheekily, and Erin rolled her eyes._

"_Oh, I don't know," she began, sarcasm practically __**dripping**__ from her voice. "Maybe it's because of the fact that I want to know what the bloody hell is going on here!!"_

_The boy flinched as he slowly took a step back away from her, his brown eyes wide. Erin stared at him intently as she crossed her arms across her chest and slowly drummed the fingers of her right hand against her left arm._

"_Well? I'm waiting."_

"_Oh, I would __**love**__ to know what I did to deserve this," the boy grumbled darkly under his breath before he looked over at the older girl. "You can just call me Nanashi for now."_

"_Nanashi? What kind of name is that?" Erin asked incredulously, both of her eyebrows raised all the way up into her hairline. 'Nanashi' groaned and slapped his face with his hand, obviously irritated._

"_You are way too skeptical," he grumbled as Erin gave him a 'duh' look. _

"_Hey, I have a little brother about the same age as you. I think I'm allowed a healthy amount of skepticism here."_

_Nanashi rolled his eyes as he reached up and adjusted the goggles that he wore pushed up above his face, which knocked against the Konoha forehead protector that he had tied around his forehead. Erin briefly toyed with the idea of ruffling the boy's already messy black hair, which stood up in every which direction, as she watched him for a few seconds before she decided to stop teasing the boy and get down to business._

"_So, where am I exactly?' she asked nonchalantly, forcing down the feeling of intense unease that she was currently experiencing. Nanashi glanced over at her and smirked, obviously glad that the nineteen-year old was no longer taking pot-shots at him._

"_Well, right now, you're asleep," he pointed out knowledgeably. "I guess that you could say that this is a dream world."_

_Erin's eyes widened slightly at this bit of information, but she forced herself to remain silent to see if she could learn anything else. Nanashi didn't notice her slightly shocked expression as he continued his little narrative._

"_As far as I know right now, this is kind of the only plane of reality that I can interact with you, but that may change later on," the boy stated with a slight shrug. "At least that's what I was told. I guess that it has something to do with extenuating circumstances or something like that."_

_Erin arched an eyebrow curiously at this comment as she stared intently at the black-haired boy in front of her, her expression slightly incredulous. _

"_Wait, so this isn't just a one-time thing?"_

"_Nope."_

_The nineteen-year old stared at Nanashi for several moments before she turned around and started to walk away, massaging the bridge of her nose. The teenage boy watched her for a few seconds before he ran after her._

"_Hey, where do you think you're going?!" he demanded as he somehow maneuvered himself in front of Erin and stared at her accusingly. The teenager looked down at him for a few moments before she finally responded._

"_Someplace sane, hopefully," she muttered as she glared at Nanashi, her eyes slightly narrowed. "I know that Jess said that it would happen eventually, but I didn't think that I'd go insane before I even turned twenty."_

"_You're not insane!" Nanashi snapped, and Erin rolled her eyes upwards as though asking for heavenly guidance._

"_Give me one good reason why I should believe you," she retorted as she glared at the smaller boy, sarcasm blatantly obvious in her voice. "As far as I know, you're just a hallucination or something."_

_Nanashi opened his mouth to respond, only to stop as the world around them became fuzzy, and Erin began to feel slightly disoriented._

"_Damn, you're waking up," he grumbled, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his black pants. Erin managed to give a confused 'huh' before everything around her shattered into millions of pieces, and the bottom of her stomach dropped out._

--

Erin's eyes snapped open as she shot upright with a gasp, her heart beating wildly as she pressed a hand against her chest in an effort to try and slow it down. What the **hell** was that all about? Sure, she'd had some pretty weird dreams before, but the one that she'd just had topped the charts.

'_Okay, no more all-nighters for me if they're going to give me freaky dreams like that,'_ the nineteen-year old grumbled as she sat up in the bed that she was currently in and looked around her.

The entire room was pitch-black, and she could barely see the dim outline of a door off to her left with a thin sliver of light showing underneath. Erin slowly shifted her covers about a little so she could sit up better, and she winced as a slight twinge of pain shot up her right arm when she tried to move it.

"What the hell?" she hissed as she reached over and felt her arm, silently noting the bandages wrapped around her hand and wrist. A slight frown crossed the teenager's face as she felt up her arm to where the pain had originated, and promptly hissed out a curse when her fingers connected with an IV line, and a needle inserted into her vein inside the crook of her elbow, as well as some bandage tape to secure it. Erin growled out a low curse of aggravation as she immediately removed her fingers from the area and repressed a shudder. She **hated** needles with a passion.

"So, you're finally awake," a voice said from a spot on her right-hand side, and Erin jumped a little as she looked over in the direction from where the voice had originated from. She still couldn't see anything since her eyes hadn't adjusted to the inky darkness of the room, so it was a little disconcerting to know that someone else was in a room with her and that she couldn't see them.

"What happened?" she finally responded nervously. "Where am I?"

The person was silent for several seconds before they answered, and when they finally did speak, Erin realized that whoever it happened to be was a guy.

"You're in a hospital right now," he stated simply. "You had a really high fever and passed out. I brought you here when you wouldn't wake up, and that was over a day ago."

"Oh," Erin said as she let out a sigh and ran her left hand through her bangs pensively. So she had passed out at school then. The teenager shook her head as she felt the bandages around both of her hands and wrists; those had definitely been some weird dreams that she's had. Thank goodness that they had just been only that, dreams. But why did she have bandages around her wrists?

"So, you're the one who brought me here?" she asked. The man sitting next to her bed was silent for a few moments, as though confused by her actions.

"Yes."

"Thank you."

"Huh?"

Erin snorted at the obvious bewilderment in the man's voice as she looked over to where she assumed he was sitting.

"I said thank you," she repeated, a small grin twitching about her lips. "Most people wouldn't have done something like that."

"Are you sure about that?" he queried. Erin stared intently at him for a few seconds, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dim lighting enough so that she could see the shadowy form of her Good Samaritan, before she responded.

"Yes, I'm sure," she stated thoughtfully before she felt exhaustion hit her like a truck. The teenager covered her mouth as she let out a huge yawn, and the man gave a faint chuckle at her actions.

"You should probably go back to sleep," he suggested, and Erin felt a hand press down on her shoulder, gently pushing her back down onto the bed. "You're still very ill, and it wouldn't do for you to make yourself worse by not getting proper rest."

"Okay," Erin agreed wearily as she felt her eyes start to slide shut, but she forced herself to push them open again as she reached for the IV still stuck in her right arm. She didn't want to go back to sleep with that damn thing still in her. Just when she had grasped the edge of the medical tape securing the evil needle to her, she felt a strong hand encircle her wrist and stop her from pulling the tape off as it gripped her firmly.

"The nurses put that in there for a reason you know," the man stated sternly, and Erin gave a muttered groan in protest.

"But I **hate** needles," she grumbled. "I'm not a damn pincushion."

There was dead silence in the dark room for several seconds, and the teenager felt a slight chill run down her spine as she looked over at the shadowy form that was her rescuer. Had she said something wrong? Just as she was about to say something, the man finally spoke, giving Erin cause to sigh in relief at the release of tension in the room.

"No, you're not, but you still need to leave that IV alone for now. The nurses will probably take it out tomorrow once they see that you're awake and lucid," he pointed out as he released Erin's wrist. The teenager hesitated slightly as she watched the man warily before she decided to pretend that nothing had happened, and rolled her eyes in response as she pulled the heavy blankets that covered her up to her chin and snuggled down under the relaxing warmth.

"That still doesn't change the fact that I hate needles," she muttered defiantly, and the man hesitated before he chuckled once again, only this time with a slightly wry note to it.

"You certainly are a stubborn one, aren't you?" he remarked, and Erin made a faint scoffing noise. Something about this guy kind of unnerved her… okay, hell, he really unnerved her. The best thing to do was act like she hadn't noticed anything, and make a joke out of it.

"Damn straight," she stated before her eyes widened slightly as a thought hit her like lightning. She was so dead.

"Crap," she groaned as she flopped back down onto the bed, all thoughts of keeping the mood light thrown out the window while attached to a lead brick.

"What's wrong?"

"I need to call my roommate tomorrow and let her know what's going on, otherwise she'll probably be having a stroke over the fact that I've been missing for over a day now."

"That can be arranged," the man stated calmly, and Erin heard him shifting slightly in his seat. "However, right now, what you need to do is rest. Worrying about things won't solve anything, and all it will do is slow down your recovery."

"Okay, point taken," the nineteen-year old muttered as she finally allowed herself to relax and lay back in her pillow. Before she even realized it, she was immersed in a deep, dreamless sleep.

--

Kakashi watched the teenager intently for several moments before her breathing evened out, indicating that the girl was sound asleep. The Jounin let out a sigh as he leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair.

He had gone back and reported to the Hokage after he had deposited Erin at the hospital, and the Third had requested that he watch over the girl and find out more about her. Kakashi frowned underneath his mask as he scrutinized the sleeping teen from his seat; the Hokage had described her as being in her early teens, but judging from the conversation that he'd just had with her, she was obviously older than that. Mid teens was probably a closer guess, although she could easily pass as a very lanky thirteen-year old at first or second glance.

It was also obvious that she'd had absolutely no experience with ninjas before, or any previous training as one either. The expression on her face when he had stopped her from pulling off her bandages had been one of pure and utter shock, and Kakashi could easily tell from the way that she had looked about the room with wide eyes that she couldn't see at all in the pitch-black darkness of the room, while he had been able to observe her perfectly.

There was no way that any shinobi worth their salt would allow themselves to be caught completely unaware like that, no matter how sick they were. Even Genin had better perception than this girl had, and most of them had just finished training at the Academy! Not to mention the fact that developing your night vision was a strict requirement to become a ninja.

However… the Jounin let out a frustrated sigh as he leaned back in his chair, his thoughts buzzing about his head like a horde of annoying, relentless bees. The one thing he had noticed right off the bat was that the teen was pretty perceptive. She had sensed his hesitation and tried to laugh it off, making a joke out of the tense atmosphere.

Kakashi's frown deepened even further as he remembered the disturbing lack of weapons or scrolls inside of the girl's bag when he had searched it. He had found a grand total of three paperback books with the cover on the wrong side, a strange-looking pencil and stick-like eraser, a regular eraser, a binder of some sort, and a notebook, as well as what looked like a hand-held radio with headphones. All in all, nothing really unique, except for the fact that all three of the books, and the notebook, were filled with some archaic form of writing that resembled chicken scratch, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out how the strange-looking radio turned on. Everything that he had found out about the girl didn't make any sense at all, except for the obvious fact that she definitely was a foreigner.

The Jounin sighed as he slumped down in his seat, silently cursing himself for agreeing to take on this assignment. Not only was nothing making any sense to him at the moment, but he also knew that going without sleep for two nights in a row was definitely not going to go over well with his body. So far, all he had done was watched a teenage girl sleep off a dangerously high fever, and hold a brief conversation with her for all of five minutes. But unfortunately it wasn't like he had anything else to do though, since his team was currently taking the Chuunin exam and wouldn't be back from the Forest of Death for another three days.

It was too bad that he didn't have enough light to read his book right then.

--

When Erin woke up the next morning, she was surprised to see that no one was in the room with her. The teen arched an eyebrow curiously as she examined her now-sunlit room, and absolutely found nothing out of the ordinary for a hospital room. The nineteen-year old glanced back over at her right arm and scowled when she caught sight of the IV still stuck in her, her expression darkening slightly. She had just reached for the tape securing the evil needle to her when a loud and cheerful voice coming from her doorway practically caused her to hit the ceiling.

"Oh, you're up!" a nurse squealed excitedly, and Erin immediately clapped both of her hands over her ears to protect them from further damage as she spun around to glare at the teenage girl standing in the doorway.

"What in the-?!" she began, only to be cut off as an older woman entered the room and started to scold the girl.

"Himeno, I told you not to do that when the patients wake up!" the dark-haired woman snapped as she lightly swatted the teenager. Himeno looked properly ashamed as she nodded in agreement to the woman's statement, and started to fidget with the apron that covered her nurse's uniform.

"I'm sorry, Rika-san," the girl muttered, and the woman now identified as Rika rolled her eyes in response.

"Just don't do it again," the older woman scolded as she shooed the brown-haired teenager out of the room. "Now go help Yuma roll bandages. I know for a fact that she needs the help."

"Yes ma'am!"

Erin just sat there and stared, absolutely at a loss for words, as she sat there and watched the nurse turn around and let out a sigh.

"Forgive her," Rika muttered as she walked over to the nineteen-year old's bed and gently removed the dreaded needle from her arm before disinfecting the area and bandaging it. "She's just very enthusiastic about her job."

"I don't mind just as long as she doesn't try to burst my eardrums again," Erin replied wryly as she brushed a stray strand of her tawny-colored hair out of her face. The older woman arched an eyebrow in amusement as she set her clipboard down on the small bedside table before pulling a thermometer out of her apron pocket.

"Well then, since you seem to be a little more alert than the last time I checked up on you, I'll need to take your temperature," she stated as she wiped down the glass rod with a small piece of cloth that smelled strongly of alcohol. "Now open your mouth and hold this under your tongue until I say so. You had better breathe through you nose if you can so you don't throw off the reading."

Erin did as she had been asked and watched Rika as she pulled the chart back out and started studying it intently, scribbling things down on it occasionally. Once the woman had judged that enough time had passed, she pulled the thermometer out of Erin's mouth and inspected it closely.

"103.5; that's still far too high, but not nearly as bad as it was when you were brought in," the nurse 'tsked' as she recorded the teenager's temperature onto the chart that she currently held. "The other night when you were brought in, you had a fever of almost 106."

"Isn't that when brain damage starts to occur?" Erin asked nervously, and was rewarded with a stern look from the older woman.

"Yes," Rika remarked tersely, her lips pressed tightly together in a thin line. "Not to mention that you were soaked to the bone from being outside for an extended period of time. It's a miracle that you didn't catch pneumonia in that state. As it is, you have a serious case of the flu that was made worse by your carelessness. You need to start taking better care of yourself young lady!"

Erin cringed slightly at the scolding before she noticed that Rika had whipped out a wooden tongue depressor and was now eyeing her intently.

"Umm… what's that for?' she ventured nervously. The older woman's expression became slightly apologetic as she gently held Erin's shoulder.

"I need to take a sample of the tissue at the back of your throat to make sure that you haven't contracted anything else," the nurse stated calmly, and the nineteen-year old's eyes grew wide as she attempted to voice her protests.

"You really don't want to do that, trust me on this. I have a- GACK!!"

Erin choked on the tongue depressor as she suddenly found the wooden medical instrument shoved in her mouth and scraped along the back of her throat. The teen's eyes bugged out as she instinctively jerked backwards, and Rika took this opportunity to yank the tongue depressor out of the girl's mouth. Erin briefly eyed the woman in front of her with absolutely loathing for about a second before she clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted off towards the bathroom connected to the hospital room.

She had barely made it inside when the sounds of the toilet lid being thrown open and retching reached Rika from her spot next to the bed. The nurse waited until the retching sounds came to a halt before she ventured into the bathroom to see Erin kneeling in front of the toilet, sweat beading her forehead as her arms shook while she glared at the interior of the toilet bowl.

"Are you alright?" Rika queried softly, and the nineteen-year old slowly looked over at her with an expression of weary dislike etched onto her now-wane face.

"I have an overactive gag reflex," Erin stated coolly as she reached up and shakily wiped off a bit of bile from the corner of her mouth, her tone somewhat accusatory. "That's what I was trying to tell you."

"Oh."

Rika gently helped the wobbly teenager to her feet and escorted her back over to her bed, where she forced Erin to lay back down and drew the covers up over her.

"You stay here, and I'll bring you something to help settle down your stomach," the older woman told her kindly. "How does that sound, love?"

"Fine," the nineteen-year old muttered as she hunkered down under her blankets. Now she felt ten times worse than when she had first woken up. Rika didn't seem to notice her discomfort as she left the room with the promise to be back soon. Erin privately hoped that the older woman would forget about her for an hour or two, and just leave her alone in her misery for a little while.

"I **hate** hospitals," she growled under her breath, hazel eyes flashing darkly. "All they do here is try to kill you faster!"

--

Kakashi repressed a yawn as he slowly walked back down the hallway towards the room where his temporary charge was located, having just left the hospital cafeteria and the slop that they called 'food'. He had briefly contemplated the idea of consuming a cup of coffee to help fight off his weariness, but had immediately nixed the plan when he caught sight of the brew try to escape from the coffee pot.

Without any human assistance whatsoever.

The Jounin lazily observed all of the nurses and doctors rushing around the hallways, most of the focused intently upon various clipboards containing the medical statistics of their patients or delivering needed medical-supplies to specific areas. He had been kicked out of Erin's room and had been told to take a break by a very persistent nurse. Wanting to avoid as much conflict as possible, he had agreed.

And hence now his current musings as to whether or not the coffee in the hospital cafeteria needed to be executed.

Kakashi wearily rubbed his forehead as he entered the hospital room that he had left Erin in, only to stop when a small nagging thought insisted that something was wrong. The twenty-six-year old slowly examined the room, noting the still-steaming bowl of rice porridge with only a few bites taken out of it sitting on a tray on the bedside table, before he finally realized what was strange about the scene before him that he was viewing.

The bed was empty.

At first, Kakashi didn't register this. He was too out of it to really even notice, having missed out on his precious dose of caffeine.

Then his inner ninja kicked in and promptly gave his caffeine-deprived brain a good swift kick in the ass. The Jounin cursed under his breath as his gaze immediately darted over towards the window, which offered a convenient escape route, before he heard the unmistakable sound of retching and the toilet flushing inside the bathroom that was connected to the room. The door opened, and a wane-looking teenage girl clad in an off-white hospital kimono tottered out before she flopped back down on the bed without even noticing him.

"I hate being sick," she grumbled as she buried her face in the pillow. Kakashi stared at her for a few moments before he decided to announce his presence. The older man loudly cleared his throat from where he was standing by the door, and he was rewarded with the girl jerking slightly as she looked over at him.

Erin's eyes widened to an almost impossible degree as she stared uncomprehendingly at the silver-haired man standing not five feet from her bed. Understanding dawned within the nineteen-year old's hazel-green eyes as the memory of her supposed 'dream' hit her like a brick.

_A tall man with long silver hair that seemed to defy gravity… one eye covered by his headband…a black-gloved hand holding onto her wrist with an unyielding grip…a lazy, drawling voice that indicated a hidden intensity behind his nonchalant act…_

"_Now now, that wasn't very nice. We just want to talk to you."_

"_Kakashi, hold onto that little hellion!!"_

_Rain… cold… fear…running from countless adults that seemed to be able to duplicate themselves at will…escape… tears… wanting to only sleep for a little bit…_

"Oh hell," Erin whispered fearfully as she slowly pushed herself away from the Jounin, who was now eyeing her intently. "It… it wasn't a…"

She didn't dare finish her statement in the fear that accepting what she was looking at would make it a definite part of reality. The nineteen-year old felt a cold trail of fear go down her spine as her body started to tremble uncontrollably; this, whatever this was, there was no way that this could possibly be normal. Being chased out of a village for no apparent reason by a group of people that she had never met before in her life didn't happen in real life! Stuff like this didn't happen to people like her. She was just a freshman in collage for God's sake!

'_That's what you thought when Patrick died,'_ a voice inside her whispered nastily, and the teenager immediately shoved the thought out of her mind. She didn't even want to go down that road right now. Her current situation was bad enough without bringing up any other painful memories.

Erin gritted her teeth as she glared at the man in front of her, whose expression seemed to be a combination of concern and puzzlement, as well as a bit of suspicion thrown into the mix, at least from what she could see. The skintight black mask that he was currently wearing pretty much hid his face from the nose down, masking any facial expressions made from that point on. The nineteen-year old silently cursed her luck as she realized that she hardly made a threatening figure, sitting there in the hospital bed, her body trembling beyond her control. Of all times for her to come down with the stomach flu…

"It wasn't a what?" the man asked calmly, a silvery eyebrow arched questioningly. Erin's expression darkened as she backed away even further, as far as her bed would allow her without falling off.

Something about this guy practically screamed 'danger', and she wasn't buying the calm and collected 'nice guy' act for a minute.

"What the bloody hell is going on?!" the teenager finally exploded as a feeling of helpless fury welled up within her. "Who **are** you, where am I, and what in the hell is going on?!"

The man stood there for several seconds before he calmly leaned up against the wall next to the door and stared at Erin intently.

"My name… hmm, I don't really feel like telling you that right now and you are currently in…" he paused for a second to look out the door of the hospital room. "…room 641 at the hospital, and I can only assume that, from your previous statement, Hell is in fact bloody."

Erin twitched at the blatantly sarcastic statement as she glowered furiously at Kakashi, her expression murderous. He was screwing with her! If looks could kill, what might have been left of him would have easily fit in a matchbox.

"Why you smug son of a-" she began angrily, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the blanket covering her, before the older man cut her off.

"If you're going to insult my mother, I suggest that you do it well outside of my hearing range," he stated coolly, but there was no mistaking the hint of steel in his voice. "Now, if you have any questions, I will gladly answer them if you use a reasonable tone of voice."

"…" The nineteen-year old scowled as she silently counted to twenty in an effort to get her temper under control before she allowed herself to give a nod of agreement. Kakashi's visible eye curved upwards, and it took Erin a few moments to realize that he was smiling underneath his mask. This guy was seriously weird… and it wasn't just his attitude either. This whole situation was completely screwy.

"Where am I, asides from being in the hospital?" she asked hesitantly, and mentally flinched when she heard the obvious tremor in her voice. Kakashi didn't seem to notice this as he watched her carefully.

"Don't you already know?"

"No, I don't, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here and asking you a stupid question."

"Remember what I said about being reasonable?"

Erin frowned darkly at the Jounin's comment, but let out a long sigh before she responded. "Could you tell me where I am, please?"

Kakashi gave her another one of those weird eye smiles as if to say 'now that wasn't so hard, was it?' before he answered her question.

"You're in the village of Konoha, which is part of the Fire Country."

Erin was two seconds away from saying 'bullshit' before she decided that it was probably best if she kept her disbelief to herself. Even though she knew that no such place existed, she needed to give the impression that she was too weak to do anything so she could catch her 'babysitter' off-guard. Although the nineteen-year old privately doubted that she was even in a good enough condition to make it down the hall without collapsing.

That still didn't mean that she didn't have a chance to make it out of there though.

'_Damned if you do, and damned if you don't,'_ she thought wryly as she eyed the masked man standing by the door thoughtfully. Kakashi arched an eyebrow at the teenager's searching gaze, and she rolled her eyes in response. The Jounin suppressed a groan as he stared back at the obviously p.o.ed girl, matching her glare for glare; why did he have to get someone who was so difficult?

"Any other questions?' he asked, with only the faintest hint of sarcasm evident in his voice. Erin frowned thoughtfully as she stared down at her bandaged hands, the reminders of both of her frantic dashes through the forest, and the encounter with what must have been all the adults in the village.

"Yeah, I do have one more," she said finally, and Kakashi prepared himself to have more obscenities launched at him for whatever crimes the teenager thought that he had committed against her. He was surprised when her hazel-green eyes locked directly onto his sole visible one and a look of confusion briefly crossed the girl's face.

"Why? Why were you all so intent on capturing me? I've never even been here before, and I suddenly had what must've been half the town out after me the other day. What did I ever do to you to deserve this?" Erin asked softly before her expression hardened and she glared murderously at the Jounin. "If this has anything to do with that red-eyed freak with the spinning pupils that I met in the woods, and you went after me on his orders, then you can go tell him that he can stuff his filthy opinions up his-"

She was cut off as Kakashi immediately stiffened up and looked at her, his eye narrowed dangerously.

"Red-eyed freak?" he asked coolly, and Erin scowled as her temper started to get the better of her once again.

"Yeah, the creepy dude wearing a long black cloak with red clouds scattered all over it. He and his psychotic buddy tried to kill me when I first woke up in the woods outside of here."

The teenager let out an involuntary yelp as Kakashi suddenly seemed to disappear from where he had been standing by the door and reappeared not a foot from her bed.

"What did he look like?" the man growled, and Erin cringed slightly at the anger in his voice.

"He had long black hair that was pulled back, and he probably had at least a few inches over me," she stated as she tried unsuccessfully to squash down any fear that she felt at the moment. "And he was wearing the same headband that you have on, so I figured that you probably know him."

Kakashi didn't say anything for a few seconds as Erin stared at him apprehensively before he finally made a comment. "Did his… I believe that you referred to him as his 'psychotic buddy', say his name at all?"

The teenager paused for a second before she responded; she had a **really** bad feeling about where this conversation was probably going. "Yeah, he called him 'Itachi-sama', whatever that means. That's a pretty weird name if you ask me."

Erin backed away another two inches as the look on Kakashi's face darkened considerably, and she sent out a silent plea for the protection of any merciful god that miraculously happened to be in the area. She was now officially freaked out. The Jounin didn't seem to notice her unease as he started grilling the nineteen-year old. "Did his headband have a large horizontal scratch through the symbol?"

"Umm… I think so… I was a little too busy trying not to let him **strangle** me to notice crap like that," she growled back testily, the helpless fury that she had felt earlier returning full-force. "All I saw was that he had the same symbol on his headband that you do."

"And so you thought that he was with us," Kakashi finished as he cast a jaundiced look at the teenager. "Is that why you threw your ramen bowl at Asuma?"

Erin could tell that he obviously felt insulted from her comment about how she thought that Itachi was with them, but she ignored the warning signs as she glared right back at the older man.

"If you're talking about the guy with the cigarette, then yes, that is why I chucked my lunch at him," she shot back as she crossed her arms across her chest in an obviously defiant gesture. "Now, are you done playing forty questions, or are you going to tell me why I had what looked like everyone here chasing after me?"

Kakashi's eye narrowed at rude tone in the teenager's voice, and she tried to scoot a little farther away from him again, only to loose her balance and fall over the edge of the bed with a loud 'crash', followed by a very foul curse that would have put a sailor to shame. The Jounin rolled his eyes as he calmly walked around the bed over to where the teenager had fallen.

"You seem to have a talent for hurting yourself," he remarked lazily as Erin shot him an indignant glare from where she lay before she scrambled up into a kneeling position and shot under the bed.

"Oh no you don't!" Kakashi growled as he immediately dropped down to his knees and grabbed the fleeing teenager's ankle, only to receive a lovely kick to the face before he could get a hold of the other one. The Jounin let out a pained grunt as he tightened his grip on the nineteen-year old's leg, much to her immense displeasure.

"Let go of me, you bastard!" Erin spat as she kicked her captor again, this time in the throat. Kakashi immediately let go as stars somehow entered his line of vision and he found that he couldn't breathe momentarily, while Erin used this opportunity to bolt out of the hospital room and into the hallway. She paused for a second in front of the door before she pulled it closed and pushed a nearby chair in front of it to block the doorway.

'_Okay, first I need to find a phone and call Jess,'_ the teenager thought as she ran down the hospital corridor, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure that Kakashi wasn't following her. _'I'm pretty sure that guy's gonna be pissed beyond belief once he gets out of there, and I __**really**__ don't want to be around when that happens.'_

Somehow, she managed to make it all the way to the stairs without collapsing, but she fell to her knees and clapped a hand over her mouth as her stomach started to heave. Erin silently cursed whoever she had caught the flu from as she barely managed to make it to a trash can before she got sick.

"D-damn it," she hissed as she slumped down against the wall across from the door leading back into the hospital corridor and rested her head against the cool concrete wall behind her as a wave of dizziness swamped her entire being. She had used up all her energy getting angry at Kakashi, and escaping for her hospital room.

The nineteen-year old involuntarily shuddered as she wrapped her arms around her legs and hugged them to her chest, resting her forehead against her knees. She hated feeling this weak; even though she had managed to ditch the silver-haired ninja through sheer dumb luck, she knew that it was only a matter of time before he found her again. There was no way that she could possibly make it out of the hospital in her condition without help.

Erin groaned slightly as her stomach started to churn again, and she shut her eyes as she gritted her teeth.

'_I will not throw up, I will not throw up, I will __**not**__ throw up,'_ she repeated silently as a roaring sound filled her ears. She was so busy concentrating on not getting sick that she didn't notice the sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs leading to the roof.

"So this is where you were hiding," a familiar voice muttered grumpily, and Erin flinched at the sound. She hadn't even made it five minutes without being caught, and what was worse was that she didn't care right then; all she wanted to do was to stop feeling like she was going to hurl.

"Go away," she mumbled, her forehead still resting against her knees. She knew she probably sounded like a little kid right then, but she could care less at the moment. Instead of leaving, Erin heard Kakashi walk closer to her, and the nineteen-year old hissed out an incomprehensible curse under her breath.

"I heard that," the Jounin remarked dryly. "And despite the fact that you believe that I am a 'persistent little bugger', to use your exact words, you are coming back to that room with me even if I have to use force."

"Go to hell."

"Hmm… how about no? I don't quite feel like it."

Erin's eyes widened, and a furious scowl crossed her face as she looked up at the man who was currently standing in front of her with an annoyingly innocent expression on his face. She opened her mouth to say something very nasty before she hastily shut it and curled back up into a ball as her stomach started to roil again.

"I'm going to murder whoever gave me this!" she hissed through clenched teeth, sweat beading on her forehead as she fought against the urge to be sick. The teenager sat there for several moments in silence, stubbornly refusing to allow herself to look any more vulnerable than she already was as she ignored Kakashi in the hopes that he would go away. After a minute, and no sarcastic remarks, Erin slowly looked up to see the last person in the world that she wanted to be anywhere near her at that moment crouched right in front of her.

"Are you alright?" the Jounin asked calmly, and the teenager eyed him warily in response.

"No, I am bloody not alright. I feel like death warmed over right now," she grumbled darkly. "So why don't you do me a huge favor and just kill me now and get it over with."

Kakashi's lone eye widened slightly at the teen's statement as he peered at her closely. "Do you seriously think that I'm going to kill you?"

"Why else would you and the rest of those people have been throwing knives at me the other day?"

Erin stared at the silver-haired Jounin in front of her intently, although she was caught off-guard when he shook his head and started chuckling. The nineteen-year old looked at the older man like he was crazy, and was silently debating the merits of seeing if she could manage to make it down the flight of stairs behind her when he stopped laughing.

"Most of those were illusions, little one," he chuckled as he reached out and ruffled the girl's hair. "Those were meant to scare you, and the few real ones that you encountered were thrown in an attempt to direct you into an ambush."

Erin scowled as she knocked Kakashi's hand away from her head and ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to flatten it.

"Gee, thanks," she grumbled sarcastically. "I'll keep that in mind the next time I have a bunch of nutjobs out after me armed with throwing knives."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he regarded the teenager thoughtfully.

"I've never seen someone your age be so cynical," he remarked, and Erin gave a low growl in response as she forced herself to her feet, ignoring the rush of dizziness that followed her sudden movement.

"And just exactly what do you think that my age is?" she asked angrily as she clenched her fists so tightly that her fingernails dug painfully into her palms. Kakashi merely stared at the angry girl as he stood up and stuffed his hands lazily into his pockets; he could tell that he had hit a nerve with his comment.

"Fourteen or fifteen at best," he stated nonchalantly, and noticed with interest that Erin's knuckles went white as she clenched her fists even harder. Fury burned deep within the teenager's eyes as she glared at him.

"I'm nineteen, moron!" she hissed. "I am not some little kid that you can appease with a head pat!"

"Well, you certainly aren't acting like it," Kakashi commented. "I have students who're twelve that behave better than you are right now."

Erin's right eye twitched as she glared at the Jounin before she spat out what sounded like a stream of insults, but it was in completely different language than from what Kakashi was used to hearing.

"_Fuck you, you slimy arrogant bastard_!!_ Do me a favor and piss off, you stupid wanker_! _I don't know who the hell you think you are, but I am sick and tired of_-!" the nineteen-year old was stopped in mid-rant by Kakashi pressing his hand against her mouth, his expression stern.

"I may not have been able to understand what you were saying just then, but it doesn't take much for me to guess that it probably wasn't anything flattering," he remarked coolly as he grabbed her left forearm when he saw her hand twitch slightly, effectively preventing the girl from hitting him. "Now, are you able make it back to your room by yourself without putting up a fight, or am I going to have to knock you out and drag you back there?"

The teenager leveled a furious glare at the lanky Jounin's single exposed eye, the promise of a painful death shining in her eyes as she proceeded to shriek a long series of unintelligible curses into the older man's gloved hand. Kakashi merely arched a silvery eyebrow as he waited until the stream of profanities died out before he spoke in lazy tone.

"Now now, is there really a need for that?"

"Bastard!!" Erin snarled as she forcefully jerked her head away from the shinobi's smothering grip and tried to land a knee to the man's groin, only to have him twist out of the way with ease before he released her wrist and snagged her knee, putting the teen in the incredibly awkward position of trying to balance on one leg with her back pressed up against the wall.

"That wasn't very nice," the Jounin drawled as he gave the now-shocked and fuming girl a slightly dismissive look, planting his hand firmly back over her mouth. "And don't even think about trying to bite me. I can tell you right now it won't work."

Erin froze, a perturbed scowl crossing her features as she glared what could only be described as 'blazing daggers of doom' at the older man currently restraining her. How the hell had he known that she was about to do that?

"I could tell by the look in your eyes," Kakashi stated simply before he arched an eyebrow. "So, are you going to play nice, or am I going to have to throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes so I can get you back to your room?"

Erin made a small sound that was muffled by his hand as she stared at the Jounin incredulously, her eyes wide. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he removed his hand from the teenager's mouth, and she took a deep breath.

"You're kidding me, right?" she asked hesitantly, and hope welled up in her chest when the ninja smiled at her.

"Nope, not at all," Kakashi stated with a grin. Erin twitched slightly at the older man's comment, but she opted not to say anything else in the hope that if she kept her mouth shut and didn't give her tormentor any ammunition, he wouldn't be able to get on her nerves as easily.

'_I can't believe this guy. It's almost like he's enjoying messing with me,'_ the teenager thought as she stepped away from the silver-haired Jounin and reached for the door that lead back out into the hospital hallway. It was right then that Erin finally noticed that she wasn't wearing what she would have called 'hospital clothing'.

"Umm… what happened to my clothes?" she asked, and Kakashi merely gave a nonchalant shrug in response.

"How should I know? The nurses were the ones who dressed you."

"You were the one who was in my room!"

"… I only dropped you off at the hospital. I was ordered to return here and watch you, and by the time I had come back the nurses had already gotten you all cleaned up."

Erin scowled as she let out a frustrated sigh. Getting information out of this guy was like talking to a brick wall, although she privately thought that a brick wall might be more responsive, and definitely a lot less aggravating.

"_God, are you annoying_!" she grumbled darkly under her breath as she stepped back out into the hallway, ignoring Kakashi's sharp 'Hey!' as the door almost hit him in the face. The teenager rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest, stubbornly refusing to allow the Jounin to see that her hands were shaking. She didn't need him to know that she was on the verge of collapse.

"You have got to be one of the most violent women that I have ever met," Kakashi stated calmly as he caught up to Erin, who had been several feet ahead of him. "And the most stubborn."

"You'd be pretty upset too if you woke up in a hospital with someone standing guard over you even though you know you've done nothing wrong," Erin shot back. "Not to mention the fact that nobody's even considered telling me what the bloody hell is going on!"

"If you've done nothing wrong, then why'd you try to escape?"

Erin paused for a second, a startled look flashing across her face before she responded. "I plead the Fifth."

"You plead the what?" Kakashi asked quizzically. The nineteen-year old glanced over at him and gave him a look that plainly said 'just exactly how stupid are you?' before she rolled her eyes again.

"I plead the Fifth, you know, as in the Fifth Amendment? Its part of the Bill of Rights…" she stopped when she saw the uncomprehending look on the older man's face. "You know, it's pretty sad when a **cop** doesn't even know about the Bill of Rights. I feel so flattered to see my parents' taxpayer dollars at work."

Even though he didn't understand half of what the girl was talking about, Kakashi could tell that the comment was meant to be an insult just from the extreme sarcasm in her voice. Although he had absolutely no idea as to how she came to the conclusion that he was a cop…

"What makes you think that I'm part of the police force?"

"Hmm, let's see… you made the comment earlier about reporting to someone, all the questions that you were asking me earlier, and you move like you've had training in some form of self-defense," Erin pointed out, holding up a finger for each point that she listed off. "Not to mention the fact that you found me even though you were still blocked in the room by the time I got here."

"Hmph, all those things that you just listed out are things that any competent ninja could do in a heartbeat," Kakashi remarked, and Erin froze before she turned around to look at him with wide hazel eyes.

"…You know what, I thought that you were off your rocker earlier, but now I **know** that you're completely mental," the teenager stated seriously as she took several precautionary steps backwards away from Kakashi, eyeing the man warily as though she expected him to suddenly attack her. "Ninjas don't exist."

"You don't believe me?" Kakashi asked as he arched an eyebrow, and Erin responded with a classic 'no duh' look.

"C'mon, I may only be nineteen, but I'm not **that** naïve," she retorted as she rolled her eyes. "'Ninja', pfft, that has got to be one of the dumbest excuses that I have ever heard."

"What makes you think that I'm not a ninja?" the Jounin asked. Erin just shook her head and sighed before she gave the older man a disbelieving look.

"Would a ninja have let a nineteen-year old girl kick him in the face?" she countered sarcastically as she pointed to the red mark that sloped down from above his eyebrow to his nose and disappeared underneath his mask. Kakashi's eye narrowed slightly as he looked down at the shorter girl standing in front of him.

"You caught me off guard when you did that," he remarked somewhat stiffly. "I didn't expect someone so sick to fight back like that. But it definitely won't happen a second time, since I **am** a ninja."

"Bull."

"What if I could prove it to you?"

"Oh, I'd **pay** to see that," Erin said as she shook her head in disbelief at the older man's statement. Kakashi didn't respond to the teenager's jab as he formed several hand signs in rapid succession, his hands moving so fast that Erin could barely even tell that he was forming distinct symbols.

"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!" he declared, and a sudden cloud of smoke erupted around him with a loud 'poof!'. Erin took a step back as she looked around her wildly, all the hair along the back of her neck standing up. She had a really bad feeling about this…

"_What the hell_?!" she growled as she waved some of the smoke away from her as it started to dissipate. It was at that moment that Kakashi walked up out of the rapidly thinning smoke and gave her an expectant look.

"Well?"

"Oh wow, you managed to make a cloud of smoke," Erin drawled sarcastically as she rolled her eyes. "What a **phenomenal** achievement. And all you need is a smoke bomb."

"Who ever said that I was just making a cloud of smoke?" a familiar voice asked from behind her, and Erin immediately spun around to see Kakashi standing right behind her. The teen's jaw immediately dropped as she stared incredulously at the individual in front of her before she whirled back around to face the Kakashi who had walked out of the smoke.

"How… why… how… what in the… how are there two…" she stammered shakily as she looked back and forth between the two Jounin before she raised a hand to her forehead and nervously ran a hand through her bangs. "Holy shit…"

It was at that moment that the remainder of the smoke finally cleared away, and there stood yet another Kakashi, who looked at her meaningfully with a raised eyebrow.

"Yo," he said calmly as he held up a hand. Erin went dead white as she stared at the Jounin before she started to tremble slightly. It was then that her body finally decided that it could no longer handle all of the stress that she had been forcing on it, and the nineteen-year old's eyes rolled back up into her head.

She was unconscious before she even pitched forward, and she would have hit the hard wooden floor beneath her were it not for Kakashi darting forward and catching her as his two clones disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

"Whoops," he muttered as he looked down at the pale form of the senseless teenage girl that he was currently holding. That had definitely been one reaction that he hadn't expected.

The Hokage was not going to be happy when he heard about this.

--

And here's the third chapter! I hope that everyone liked it, and that I didn't keep you in suspense too long. So far, people seem to really like this story, and I'm glad that I've managed to produce something that people seem to find worth reading.

**Envy:** You know, if you concentrated on writing a story of your own instead of working on fanfictions, you might actually become famous.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Scowls) Oh shut up, you stupid palm tree! I can just as easily screw with your mind like I did with Itachi. (Points over at said weasel boy, who is currently huddled in a corner and muttering under his breath.)

**Itachi:** Evil scary… evil scary… very, very, very scary…

**Envy:** (Sweatdrops) You can't say that I didn't warn him… besides, it's not like I could possibly lose my mind as easily as that pathetic human over there could! I'm a homunculus; you'll have to try a lot harder than that.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Somehow, I don't think that I'll have to try that hard to make you lose your mind; you're already more than half crazy as it is.

**Envy:** What?!

**Wandering Hitokiri:** You heard me, idiot.

**Envy:** Shut up! I know where you sleep!!

**Wandering Hitokiri:** And I know where your human remains are.

**Envy:** … I hate you.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Good, at least you have enough common sense to recognize that.

**Envy:** I'll get you for this someday.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Not in your lifetime. (Smirks) After all, I **am** a hitokiri.

Oh, and stuff said by Erin that's written like "_This_" is said in Gaelic. You'll find out a little more behind that in later chapters.

**Reviews:**

TheCrazyScotswomanOfDOOM: No, I agree with you. I don't mind a little romance, but you have to develop it, not have the whole 'love at first sight' cliché. That's what really drives me nuts, and I've noticed that the characters involved in stuff like that tend to be really shallow. Which is the main reason why I never read romance novels… they're nothing more than trashy Mary-Sue stories that managed to get published. I read one **once**, and I got maybe five pages into it before I put it back on the shelf because I wanted to gag.

Lady Renyel of Arella: Thank you very much.

rockleefan: Yeah, Erin does seem to get into a lot of trouble. She just has a talent for it… I torture my poor characters a lot. (Grins evilly) Sorry if I wasn't clear enough with the whole 'being mistaken for a thirteen-year old' bit. Okay, here's the story behind it; one of my best friends is nineteen, and she keeps getting mistaken for a thirteen-year old all the time, even though she's about 5'5. I asked my dad about it once, 'cause it happens to me too sometimes, and he says that it's because my friend and I both have very 'youthful' faces. So, it'll be a good thing when we're like thirty, but right now it's just a pain in the ass. Anyways, if Erin's the only teenager in the area, people usually mistake her for being thirteen, but if there is someone who's around thirteen near her, people think that she's older than that, but not by much. That's how that whole thing works. I hope that I answered any questions that you had about that little situation.

TwoCrazyGirls: Thank you. I'm glad that I surprised you. That's what I was aiming to do. (Grins) Do me a favor though, and don't sic Snape on me. I already have a hormonal palm tree to deal with, and I can barely keep him off my back without excessive use of force.

**Envy:** Hey!


	4. Chapter Four: Third Hokage

**Chapter Four:**

**The Third Hokage**

"Geez Kakashi, what did you do, scare the kid senseless?"

Erin frowned slightly as she lay there with her eyes shut, halfway in between sleep and wakefulness. That voice sounded familiar… why couldn't she place where she had heard it before?

"… she's not a kid, Iruka. When I made a comment about how old she was, she nearly took my head off. According to her, she's not too much younger than you."

Both of the people talking were men, and the one that had just spoken sounded a little irritated. The person who had spoken first, Iruka, made a disbelieving noise.

"Yeah right. How old did she say that she was?"

"Nineteen."

Iruka was silent for a few moments, and Erin was just about to drift back off to sleep when he suddenly spoke again.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No. As far as I could tell, she wasn't lying. She apparently doesn't like it when people mistake her for being younger than she really is, seeing as she started yelling at me in another language after I told her that I thought that she was fourteen or fifteen," Kakashi stated dryly. "From what I could tell, some of it sounded pretty foul."

Iruka gave a low whistle of astonishment, and Erin heard him sit down in the chair next to her bedside with a slight 'creak'.

"So she speaks another language then? Do you know what it is?"

"Iruka, I don't even know this girl's name or where she came from. The nurses showed me what was in her pockets, and she doesn't have so much as a scrap of identification on her. Not to mention the fact that it was a language that I've only heard used when someone was trying to curse me to the darkest depths of hell."

"Well maybe we can get that person in here to translate."

"Not likely."

"Why, were they an enemy nin?"

"No, Konoha shinobi."

"Then why not?"

"They're dead."

"Oh." There was a hesitant pause before Iruka spoke again. "So, you don't know her name?"

"No, I was too busy trying to track her down to get a name."

"I do."

"What?" Kakashi asked incredulously.

"I know her name," Iruka said somewhat smugly. "She told me that her name was 'Erin' when she was in the Ichiraku ramen shop. And she mentioned that her father was from a country called 'Ireland'."

There was a sharp intake of breath from the older shinobi before he finally spoke again. "Ireland you said? I think I've heard of that country."

"From who?"

"A friend of mine. Ironically, it was the same one who used the language that this girl did. Apparently the people who live there don't often leave, so as a result it's practically hidden. The only way one can actually find it is if they already know where it is."

"Sounds kind of suspicious if you ask me," Iruka commented dryly. Kakashi sighed, and Erin could tell that he sounded pretty tired. It was getting harder for her to fall back asleep… maybe she should wake up soon.

"You know, you could stop lying there with your eyes closed and pretending to be asleep," a voice said right in her ear, and Erin bolted upright with a yelp as she simultaneously twisted away from Kakashi, who was standing right next to her bed. Unfortunately, she also managed to fall out of her hospital bed for the second time that day with a loud 'thump'.

"Oww…" she groaned as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, her entire right side stinging from where she had landed on it. The nineteen-year old ignored Iruka sitting in a chair not three feet away from her as she stood up and glared at Kakashi, rubbing her right arm absent-mindedly as she did so.

"Do you just enjoy scaring the hell out of me or something?" she gritted out angrily. The Jounin just shrugged as he looked back at her intently.

"You fell out of bed all on your own," he pointed out. "I did nothing to help you with that."

"Wise arse," Erin growled darkly, and then winced at the slight accent that crept into her voice. Nineteen years of spending almost every summer at her grandmother's house in Killiney had definitely rubbed off on her, unfortunately. It had without a doubt had a noticeable effect on her vocabulary.

"What was that?" Kakashi asked, and Erin let out a heartfelt groan as she reached up and massaged the bridge of her nose. She did **not** need this right now.

"I said 'wise ass'," she shot back irritably as she shut her eyes and leaned up against the hospital bed that she had been using. "Didn't you hear me the first time?"

"Actually, the first time it sounded to me like you said 'arse' instead of 'ass'," the Jounin said cheerfully, and Erin fought the urge to smack her forehead against the closest wall. There was just something about this guy that annoyed the ever-living hell out of her.

"Are you always this annoying, or am I just an exception?" she growled as she glared daggers at Kakashi, who didn't seem at all bothered by the acidic tone in her voice.

"That would depend solely upon who you ask."

"Okay, it's official," Erin groaned as she sat back down on the bed and buried her head in her hands. "I'm in hell."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow at the teenager's statement. "And what makes you say that?"

"Because every time that I've woken up within the past twenty-four hours, you've been around, and something bad has always happened after that," the nineteen-year old spat out in obvious irritation as she looked at the Jounin angrily and jabbed an accusing finger in his direction. "Not to mention the fact that all it takes is one smart-ass comment from you to tick me off. I've never met anyone so annoying in my entire life, and I have two brothers!!"

Iruka snickered slightly at the teenager's comment, while Kakashi just rolled his eyes in response. Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

"So you're blaming me for your problems right now?"

"No, I'm blaming you for making me doubt my own sanity! The only way I could possibly explain half of what's happened to me is that I'm losing my mind!"

Kakashi gave Erin a questioning look before he realized what she was talking about. He smiled as he leaned up against the wall by the door. "Oh, you're talking about when I did Kage Bunshin back by the stairwell. Are you saying that you don't believe that that happened?"

Erin made a low noise of irritation in the back of her throat as she shot a murderous glare at the older man. "No, what I'm saying is that it was probably a hallucination. I've had 'em before when I've been sick, so it's not an uncommon occurrence. Besides, I don't believe a single ounce of the crap that you've fed me so far, since there's no solid proof to back up your story. So until you can give me physical evidence that supports your statement, I'm gonna stick to the philosophy of 'If I can, see it, and I can touch it, then it's real' for now."

"So, are you saying that you'd like me to prove that what happened earlier was real?" Kakashi asked as he smiled at the teenager. Erin twitched slightly at his statement, but quickly put a lid on her unease.

"No thanks. I think I've had enough fun for today," she grumbled sarcastically, and Iruka arched an eyebrow as he looked over at Kakashi.

"Okay, I take that back; you were right," he told the Jounin. Erin stared over at the dark-haired man for a few moments with a deadpan expression on her face before she spoke. She felt kind of embarrassed because she had just now noticed that he was in the room.

"Aren't you the guy who was at the ramen shop?" she asked hesitantly, and Iruka nodded in response.

"Yeah. Anyway, from what I've heard, you caused quite a ruckus the other day," the Chuunin remarked as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "That amazes me, seeing as you looked pretty peaky even then. So, how long did it take for Kakashi to catch you?"

"Huh?"

Erin missed Kakashi silently making the throat-slicing motion behind her as she stared at Iruka incredulously. The Academy instructor got the not-so-subtle hit immediately, and changed his question.

"What I meant was, umm…" Iruka paused as the nineteen-year old arched an eyebrow and regarded him coolly.

"As far as I know, no one caught me," she stated simply, although there was no mistaking the slight hint of irritation hidden in her voice. "The last thing I remember is falling asleep out in the middle of the woods, and even that's a little fuzzy."

The two shinobi exchanged looks, and Kakashi shrugged slightly at Iruka's questioning gaze. Erin's eyes narrowed in suspicion as she looked back and forth between the two men.

"There's something going on that you two aren't telling me, isn't there?" she accused before she fixed Kakashi with a mistrustful glare. "You never did tell me how exactly you found me and brought me here."

The Copy Ninja actually looked somewhat nervous as he regarded the teenager.

'_Damn, she's pretty perceptive,'_ herealized as he schooled his features into his usual neutral mask. _'Somehow, I doubt that she's going to buy the suggestion that I just ran across her by accident.'_

"You left quite a trail going into the woods," he stated nonchalantly. "Anyone could have followed it. Anyways, when I found you unconscious underneath a large tree, I saw that you were seriously ill, and brought you here to receive medical treatment before reporting to the Hokage. That's it."

Erin stared at Kakashi for several moments before she sighed and started to rub her temple with her right hand.

"This is insane," she muttered as she closed her eyes. "I'm getting a headache just thinking about how all of this could even be possible."

"And why's that?" Iruka asked. "Even a Genin could probably have tracked you down, so it would have been a piece of cake for a Jounin or any other well-trained ninja."

The nineteen-year old twitched slightly at the Chuunin's statement, and Kakashi gave a wry grin under his mask. It looked like she was still stubbornly denying the fact that ninjas existed.

"I could always do Kage Bunshin again if you still don't believe in ninjas," he offered mischievously, and Erin actually flinched at his comment.

"No thank you," she muttered as she looked away from the Jounin. Iruka arched an eyebrow incredulously as he looked over at Kakashi.

"She doesn't believe that ninjas exist?" the Academy instructor asked skeptically, shock evident in his voice. "That's ridiculous! Even average people outside of here now about Konoha and the other hidden villages! They even know about the Hokage! How can someone **not** believe that they exist?!"

"Umm… for your information, I'm sitting right here," the teen commented dryly with a roll of her eyes. "Stop talking about me like I'm not in the room."

The two shinobi ignored her comment as they continued to talk.

"It's possible that someone went through a great deal of trouble to make sure that she led a sheltered life," Kakashi offered. "I've heard that many wealthy families pay to have tutors come and educate their children at home, so most of them don't get a taste of the outside world until they've reached adulthood."

Erin gave a muffled snort as she looked over at the silver-haired ninja.

"You think that I've been home-schooled, is that what you're saying?" she asked dubiously before she burst out laughing. "Oh, that's funny! I've been in the public school system since the age of five, and you two think that I've had a private tutor!!"

Both men sweatdropped as they looked at the still-chuckling teenager as she straightened up and wiped away a tear that had formed in her eyes.

"Well, at least she's not being confrontational anymore," Iruka muttered quietly, and Kakashi nodded in agreement. Erin didn't notice their whispered conversation, seeing as she was still trying to figure out where they had come up with the idea that she had been tutored, and the two men were at least six feet away from each other.

"So, who or what is the Hokage?" she asked suddenly, and Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he stared at the teenager. Why was he not surprised that she didn't know this?

"The Hokage is the leader of our village, and one of the best ninja in the region," Iruka stated as he automatically slipped into 'teacher' mode. "He is one of the Five Shadows, and on equal footing with the Lord of the Land of Fire!"

"…that still doesn't explain anything to me. I understood squat of what you just said," Erin grumbled before her expression became thoughtful and she looked over at Kakashi. "Wait a sec… didn't one of you mention that your 'Hokage' or whatever wanted to see me when you went after me at the ramen shop?"

"That would have been Asuma," Kakashi corrected automatically as he fixed the teenager with a pensive look. "And I believe that since you know our names, it would be good manners for you to tell us yours."

Erin arched an eyebrow slightly before she gave a soft sigh. "Like I told Iruka earlier, it's Erin Cody."

"Come again?" the Jounin asked as he snapped out of his slight daze, which was partially due to a combination of the lack of sleep, and just his usual attitude. Erin rolled her eyes as she gave a slightly exasperated sigh

"I said, my name's Erin. Er-rin, two syllables, not that hard to remember."

"Thank you," Kakashi said with a sly smile, although Erin couldn't see it; he couldn't resist needling the teen a little more. "I wasn't entirely paying attention the first time, so I didn't catch the first part of your name. I could have sworn that you said that your name was 'Cody'."

Erin twitched at the barb, and her hands clenched so tightly that her knuckles went completely white as she shot a death glare at the Jounin.

"All stressed out and no one to choke," she growled darkly as she looked away from the silver-haired man and stared straight ahead at the wall in front of her. Kakashi arched an eyebrow at her statement, and smirked slightly underneath his mask.

"Was that a threat?" he asked innocently, and the glare that he received in response was almost capable of melting the flesh off of his face.

"No, with you it's more like a promise," Erin hissed venomously as she turned away again, still refusing to look at the older man. It was all she could do not to throw something at him, but she privately doubted that it would actually hit him.

"You know, for someone who claims to be nineteen years old, you act awfully immature."

"Go to hell."

"Didn't we already go over this conversation this morning?"

"Sod off."

"Now then, what's all this?" a different voice asked suddenly, and Erin jumped slightly as she turned around to see an elderly man standing in the doorway. At first, she thought that she was looking at somebody's grandfather, at least until she spotted the two obviously armed guards standing behind him. That, and the long red and white robes that he was wearing indicated that he was someone important.

"Lord Hokage!" Iruka and Kakashi both exclaimed, with the former jumping up out of his chair. Erin arched an eyebrow at this bit of information; she had been expecting someone a little younger, although the old man did seem to have an aura of leadership surrounding him. The Hokage nodded in acknowledgment at both men before he focused his attention onto the confused teenager sitting in the hospital bed.

"So, this is the one who caused all that ruckus the other day, hm?" he asked as he looked over at Kakashi, who nodded briefly in affirmation.

"Yes sir."

The Hokage tilted up the brim of the large white hat that he wore and looked at Erin pensively.

"Perhaps, my dear, you could assist us in giving us your name and where you're from, and then we'll try to explain what's going on," the elderly man stated with a smile. "You have questions in your eyes, and you seem to be a little frustrated. I can only apologize if we've frightened you."

Erin blinked in surprise; whatever she had been expecting, this definitely wasn't it. She sighed a bit before she launched into a brief narrative for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day… or since she'd gotten there for that matter.

"Well, my name's Erin Cody, and I just turned nineteen in October," she started before she paused momentarily. A slight feeling of unease came over her as she contemplated whether or not this was really wise, and then shrugged it off; if she wanted any answers, she needed to swallow her pride and give out some information first. "Right now, I'm a student planning on majoring in Biology at University of Portland, in Portland, Oregon. I'm currently living on campus in the dorms with my roommate Jess, but I'm from the town of Kittawake, which is a three-hour drive away from Portland."

The Hokage arched his eyebrows in surprise as he looked at the teenager for several moments, while Iruka and Kakashi exchanged speculative glances behind his back. This was the most information that they had gotten out of the girl combined.

"Hmm, and where is this 'Portland' located?" the Third asked gently, and Erin frowned slightly in confusion. "Allow me to elaborate; is it located in the Land of Wave, the Land of Mist, or in some other territory?"

"Well, it rains a lot in Oregon, but I've never heard it be called anything like that," the nineteen-year old admitted with a shrug. "It is on the Pacific coast of the United States though, if that's what you're asking."

All she received in response was blank looks from all the adults in the room. Erin looked at all three men incredulously, her hazel eyes barely flickering over towards the two Anbu guards that stood just outside the door to her room, before she finally voiced her disbelief.

"You don't know where the United States is?" she asked dubiously, and when nobody answered her question, she groaned and buried her head in her hands. "Oh, you have **got** to be kidding me."

The Hokage frowned slightly as he regarded the teenager intently for a few moments before he approached her and gently placed a wrinkled hand on her forehead.

"Hold still for a moment; I just want to make sure of something," he said reassuringly as Erin opened her mouth right before she was blown away by a barrage of images, all of them her own memories.

_Cars rushing past on a freeway… walking through the mall with her friends… her first driving lesson… working on her final essay for English… the day her parents came home with Keith from the hospital… holding her mother's hand as they entered Disneyland for the first time… looking at possible collages on the internet at home with her parents… running after Tyler as he and some of his friends left her behind on their bikes…sitting through her History final… her first day of middle school… when she first moved into her dorm… the time she beat the snot out of some sixth-graders harassing Keith… making friends with Patrick in second grade… her sixteenth birthday… her father handing a tiny German Shepherd puppy to her that would latter become Cuchulainn… meeting Jess for the first time… sitting in computer lab joking around with Patrick and some of her other friends… her first day of high school… getting her learner's permit… staring ahead at her English professor during an incredibly boring lecture… high-school graduation… applying for different scholarships… walking out of her History classroom after the final exam and passing out… the end of her conversation with Nanashi… _

Then as suddenly as it had started, the images that had all been shuffled through vanished, and a flash of blindingly white light exploded beneath her eyelids. The teenager flinched as she instinctively jerked away from the Hokage's hand, and for one split second, she heard what sounded like Nanashi swearing foully in the very back of her mind.

Erin opened her eyes and stared incredulously at the elderly man in front of her, her body shaking slightly. Who was this man, and how had he managed to just shuffle through the contents of her mind like flipping through a book? Just when she had opened her mouth to ask what the hell had just happened, the Hokage turned around and said something to Iruka that sounded like absolute gibberish to her.

"What the-?" she gasped, and immediately attracted everyone's attention to her. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he peered intently at her, while Iruka just gaped open-mouthed at her.

"Kimi **wa** dare?" he finally asked, and Erin stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"I honestly did not understand a word you just said," she stated seriously, and started to get nervous when the frowns on all three of the men's faces deepened. Erin looked first at the Hokage, and then at Kakashi, before she realized that something was definitely wrong.

"Okay, what the hell is going on here?" she asked anxiously, and Kakashi responded with yet another long string of gibberish. The nineteen-year old frowned as she moved from her sitting position on the hospital bed, and swung her legs over the edge so she could stand up.

"If you guys are doing this to be funny, I'm so not laughing, so just knock it off al- AARGHH!!" Erin stopped in mid-sentence as a shrieking pain lanced through her head, and she immediately slid off the edge of the bed and crumpled to her knees as her hands automatically went up and clutched at the sides of her aching skull.

The teenager swore foully in Gaelic through gritted teeth as she tried to force her way through the excruciating agony that seemed to be bound and determined to consume her very being. It felt as though some homicidal psychopath had taken up residence inside of her head and was now determinedly jabbing repeatedly at her brain with a rusty pitchfork, giggling insanely all the while. This was the migraine from hell!! It almost felt like her head was going to split wide open, except that it would probably be a relief if it did.

Erin was so deeply entrenched in her own personal hell-hole, that she didn't notice the pained whimper that somehow unwillingly emerged from her throat, nor did she notice that Kakashi had swiftly crossed the room from where he had been standing by the door and was now kneeling in front of her. She had her eyes clenched shut, and was almost to the point of tears when suddenly two callused hands wrapped around her own and gently pulled them away from her head, where her fingernails had been digging deep into her scalp. Startled, the nineteen-year old looked up and stared at the Jounin in front of her through a pained haze.

"Daijobu des ka?" Kakashi asked softly, a faint trace of worry evident in his dark eye. Erin could barely think straight as she struggled against the fiery agony that was coursing through her head, and now starting to make its way throughout the rest of her body. It was all she could do just to manage to get out two words.

"It… hurts…" she whimpered, and even though Kakashi didn't seem to understand what she was saying, he immediately released both of her hands and rapidly formed a series of symbols with his hands before a pale green glow enveloped them and he pressed his palms against her head.

Almost immediately, the shrieking pain vanished, and Kakashi rocked back onto his heels just as Iruka growled out a question.

"Baka janai ka? Kakashi, you could've gotten her killed!!" the Academy instructor snarled as he glared at the Jounin. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for someone who isn't a trained med nin to perform medical ninjutsu?!"

Erin blinked as she looked over at Iruka, her hazel eyes wide. The first part of his question had been complete gibberish to her, but the rest she had actually understood. What in the world was going on?

"We didn't exactly have time for that, if you didn't notice," the Jounin replied tersely as he glared over his shoulder at the younger man. "Or did you not notice the fact that she was practically **whimpering** in pain?"

The nineteen-year old gave a weary sigh as she slumped backwards against the side of the bed and tried to ignore the rapidly escalating argument that was taking place in front of her. Her migraine from hell had vanished almost completely, but she still had a bad headache, and Iruka and Kakashi's barbed insults being flung back and forth did nothing to help.

"You shouldn't have taken a risk like that!! What would've happened if something had gone wrong?!"

"Well nothing did go wrong, so we don't need to worry about that, do we?"

"You don't know that for certain! How do you know that she isn't mute now or something like that?! You may have permanently damaged her for life!!"

"All I did was stop whatever was causing her pain!"

"How do you-!"

WHAM!!!

Iruka found himself cut off as an accurately thrown metal bedpan hit the wall not two inches from his face, and he slowly looked over at the irate teen that was currently giving him the evil eye, while Kakashi stiffened up for a second before he turned around as well.

"Both of you, just shut the hell up!!" Erin snarled as she looked up at the two men and glared at them furiously. "Unless you want me to get up and kick **both** of your sorry asses straight into the next millennia, I highly suggest that you stop shouting, because it's not solving anything!!!"

The two shinobi stared at her wide-eyed as the teenager slowly got to her feet, while the Hokage chuckled slightly at the event that had just taken place.

"It is never wise to make a woman angry," he advised sagely, and Erin let out a low sigh in response.

"I just wanted them to shut up before my headache got worse. It's not nearly as bad as it was earlier, but that doesn't mean that I need a shouting match going on two feet away from me," she grumbled as she sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her right hand on her forehead. After several seconds of stunned silence, Kakashi approached the nineteen-year old and looked at her intently.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, and Erin looked up at him and arched an eyebrow wryly.

"Better, now that I don't have the mother of all migraines trying to smash my skull apart," she remarked dryly before she frowned slightly. "What the hell happened anyways? One minute I was able to understand everything that you all were saying, and then it all turned into gibberish! And then when that headache happened…"

The teenager failed to repress a shudder that coursed throughout her entire body as she slowly reached up and wiped away the sweat that beaded on her forehead. She hadn't noticed that she had been sweating until now. Between what had just happened, and her already having the flu, she didn't know how much more of this she could take. And she **definitely** didn't want to collapse again.

"You're the one who started babbling away in another language," the Jounin stated slowly, and Erin scowled at him in response.

"No I didn't," she muttered rebelliously. The Copy Nin arched an eyebrow at her defiant tone before he spoke.

"Prove me wrong then."

"I've been speaking English the entire time, except for the few times when I've grumbled something in Gaelic," she shot back. Kakashi's lone eye widened slightly as he stared at her for several seconds before he finally responded.

"You say that you've been speaking… this English for the entire time," he murmured thoughtfully as he looked over at the Hokage. "That's odd, seeing as you've been speaking almost flawless Japanese from the moment that we've met you."

Erin's eyes widened to an almost impossible degree as her head snapped up and she gawked incredulously at the silver-haired ninja standing in front of her.

"W-what?!" she yelped, causing Iruka to jump slightly and Kakashi to wince as her voice rose up a couple octaves. "That's impossible! I don't even **know** a single word of Japanese, so how can I be speaking it fluently?!! The only languages that I speak that well are English and Gaelic!!"

"You obviously must know it if you are speaking it," the Jounin pointed out calmly, and received a dirty glare from the teen as she crossed her arms over her chest and made a low noise in the back of her throat.

"Like hell I do," she growled. "You know what I think? I think that you three are all feeding me a giant crock of crap and screwing with my head for kicks."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he regarded the fuming girl calmly. "Is that so?"

"Yes. And you know what, I've had enough of this," Erin hissed, her greenish eyes narrowed dangerously before her tone became laced with obvious contempt. "Surprise, surprise. Now if you gentlemen would excuse me, I'm going to go locate a payphone and call my roommate so she can come and sign the release forms so I can get the hell out of this insane asylum."

With this statement, the nineteen-year old stalked over towards the door, only to have Kakashi suddenly step out in front of her.

"I don't think so," he stated calmly, fixing the teen with an authoritative look. "Do you recall what happened the last time you tried to leave the room, or did your short-term memory get shot when you passed out?"

"The only reason I passed out in the first place is because you're an ass," the girl muttered as she shot a glare up at the taller man before she tried to shove her way past him, reaching out for the doorknob with one hand just as the Jounin swiftly grabbed her wrist. Erin's eyes widened before she attempted to wrench her hand from the older man's grip, panic flooding through her system.

"Let go of me!!"

"Not until you decide to act rationally," Kakashi stated calmly as he eyed the teenager lazily. Her eyes narrowed dangerously before she snarled out something that sounded far less than flattering to the other occupants in the room.

"_Imigh __sa __diabhal__!_"

The Jounin let out a world-weary sigh as he rolled his sole visible eye upwards, silently wondering what kami he had offended to deserve this.

"Well then, you leave me no choice."

"Huh-?" Erin managed to utter before she found herself unceremoniously flung over the Copy Nin's shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and immediately let out an indignant squeal as she started to squirm about in his grip. "Put me down!!"

"I don't think so," Kakashi said with a slight chuckle as he held the teen in a way that made it hard for her to really land any hits on him. "You know, you sure are light for someone your age."

This resulted in a foul curse from the nineteen-year old before she purposely drove her elbow right into the back of the shinobi's neck, causing him to wince slightly before her jostled her to get her to stop squirming.

"Now now, no need to get so nasty," the Jounin said calmly before he easily tossed Erin back onto her hospital bed, much to the amusement of the Hokage and Iruka. The teen let out a low, wordless snarl of outrage as she seized the first thing she could get her hands on, in this case it was her pillow, before she flung it at the Copy Nin as hard as she could.

Kakashi just stepped out of the way of the projectile as it thudded harmlessly against the wall before he looked over at the nineteen-year old and arched an eyebrow meaningfully, as if to say 'is that the best you can do?'. Unsurprisingly, Erin looked like she was about to commit a very violent murder as she glared daggers at the Jounin before she looked away from him and forced herself to take several deep breaths, trying to calm down.

"Are you done now?" he asked cheerfully, and promptly received another muttered profanity in response, as well as the 'middle finger salute'. Iruka gave a slightly nervous laugh as he looked away from the scene, while the Hokage seemed to be trying to hide a slight smirk.

"Well now, if you're finished," the Sandaime began calmly, and Erin looked over at the elderly man before she flushed a bright shade of red and gave a muttered apology as she ducked her head down. She had been so angry at Kakashi's taunting that she had forgotten that there was anyone else there with them.

"As I was about to say before we all found ourselves off-track, this is all quite interesting," the Hokage muttered as he stroked his white goatee thoughtfully. "Coupled with what I saw about your life earlier, this new information presents a very puzzling picture."

"What do you mean by that?" Erin asked hesitantly, missing the puzzled look that flashed across Kakashi's face as he and Iruka also directed their attentions over to the Third. The elderly man gave a sigh as he pulled up the chair that Iruka abandoned earlier and sat in it before he looked over at the two Anbu standing just outside the small hospital room in the hallway.

"Please close the door," he ordered, and the moment that the door was shut, he immediately fixed the two ninja and Erin with an intense gaze. "What I am about to talk about does not leave this room, understood? And if it is mentioned, it is only in the company of myself or either of you in a private setting. No one else is to know of this."

"And why is that?" Iruka asked curiously in spite of himself, a thoughtful frown making its way across his face.

"Because this information is S-classed," the older man stated seriously. Understanding flashed across Kakashi's face for one brief moment before he schooled his features back into his usual mask.

"Yes sir," Erin muttered softly, although she was confused about the extreme secrecy. Iruka and Kakashi just nodded in agreement. The Hokage appeared pensive as he stared at the teenager for several moments before he finally spoke.

"You, young lady, are not from around here, are you?" he asked, looking directly at Erin. "In fact, I don't even think that you are from **any** of the surrounding countries."

Erin swallowed nervously, and her hands clenched as she stared in shock at the Third Hokage while Iruka gaped wordlessly at the older man.

"Lord Hokage, what are you suggesting then …?" Iruka began, only to trail off as though he didn't want to actually voice his opinion. The older shinobi arched an eyebrow before he let out a slow sigh.

"You mentioned earlier to Iruka that your father was from another country, did you not?" the elderly man asked suddenly, and Erin was barely able to bite down on her lip in time before she could say something stupid. She frowned slightly before she answered, momentarily allowing her curiosity to get the better of her.

"Yeah, I did. Why?"

"Could you please tell us the name of your father's homeland, just so that I can make sure that the information I received was correct?"

At this point the teenager became a little unnerved as she looked at the man with wide eyes, a flicker of barely hidden fear flashing beneath the surface of her mossy orbs. She pursed her lips together in a flat line, worry evident on her face before she let out a long sigh of defeat, knowing that there was no way for her to get out of this mess other than answer the questions she was asked.

"My dad's from Ireland, and so is a good portion of my mom's family too," she stated softly, and noted with detached interest that Kakashi immediately straightened up at her words before his lone eye narrowed slightly.

"Really. And how did you manage that?"

Erin arched an eyebrow as she shot a dirty look in the silver-haired ninja's direction, before she decided to continue her answer and ignore the current pain in her ass.

"Because my great-grandparents on my mom's side emigrated from Ireland when my grandma was a little girl, and when she grew up she married my grandpa, and since they loved each other very much, they had a couple of kids, including my mom. And then, when my mom grew up, she met my dad on a trip back to Ireland to visit some extended family on her side, they fell in love, and then they got married and had three kids, me and my two brothers respectively," the nineteen-year old explained in a tone that was dripping with sarcasm as she rolled her eyes upwards in obvious irritation. "_Is minic a gheibhean beal oscailt diog dunta, __amadán_."

The two other ninja in the room blinked in surprise at the teen's sudden switching of languages as she spouted off what sounded like a line of gibberish, while Kakashi didn't even look the least bit phased.

"You know, in most cultures it's considered quite rude to call someone an idiot in another language other than the one they speak," he stated calmly, and Erin damn near choked on her own air as she gawked up at the lanky Jounin as he gave her yet another one of his annoying eye smiles.

"What the…?" she began before she cut herself off, not wanting to let the desired expletive fall from her lips. "How the hell do you know that?"

Kakashi smiled at her again, and Erin suddenly had an epiphany as her eyes narrowed dangerously, and a sneaking suspicion formed in the back of her mind.

"_Na dean maggadh fum_," the teenager hissed, bristling like a pissed-off cat as she glared at the silver-haired shinobi before she switched back to English… or whatever the hell she was speaking now. "You fucking understand Gaelic."

"A bit," the Copy Nin finally admitted as he continued to smile. "I knew someone who came from Ireland, and they had the same habit as you of insulting me in Gaelic until they turned blue in the face. It's hard not to pick up a few things when you spend a couple of years listening to someone say the same things."

Erin stared at the older man for several long moments, her expression one of utter incredulity as she opened and shut her mouth wordlessly, while the Sandaime looked over at Kakashi, comprehension in his brown eyes. He arched an eyebrow meaningfully, and the Copy Nin nodded once in agreement. The teenager didn't notice the silent exchange between the two men as she tried to wrap her mind around what she had just been told, at least until something dawned upon her.

"Wait a second here, you're saying that you've heard of Ireland, and even knew someone that came from there… but you've never even heard of the United States? What kind of fucked-up logic is that?"

Silence reigned in the room for several minutes before the silver-haired Jounin let out a long, weary sigh.

"So tell me, is it just a cultural trait for all people hailing from that land to be as blunt as possible?" Kakashi asked dryly as he arched an eyebrow challengingly, giving Erin cause to shoot him a filthy look before she averted her gaze and crossed her arms over her chest, obviously refusing to reply.

Sarutobi sighed as he placed a hand over his face, looking upwards as though he was asking for divine intervention. He recalled a similar scene between two younger shinobi several years ago, and briefly wondered if he should use the same tactic to break up the argument as he had then. After a moment of deliberation, the Third decided that it probably wouldn't be the best idea to fling a kunai in between an upset shinobi and a jumpy civilian, even if it would make him feel better.

Glancing over at Iruka, who also looked exasperated with the situation, the Hokage cleared his throat loudly, interrupting the glaring match between Kakashi and Erin, before he continued with what he had been saying earlier.

"Then there is the fact with your chakra," he remarked calmly. "Not only is it almost impossibly constricted, but it also appears as though it has never been used."

The nineteen-year old's eyes widened slightly as understanding hit her, and she looked up at the Sandaime as she remembered a comment made to her earlier.

"The other day, in the woods after I first woke up… that guy who tried to kill me… Itachi… he made some comment about how my chakra was constricted," Erin began as a puzzled expression crossed her face. "But what I don't understand is what the heck is chakra… and how can either of you see it?"

"Chakra is the energy that a shinobi uses to perform ninjutsu of any form, and are drawn from both the mind and the body. However, ninjas are not the only ones who possess chakra, seeing as every single thing on this earth holds within it at least a faint trace of chakra within it, for without chakra, there is no life. The chakra of a ninja is more developed and holds greater potential for use than the chakra of a civilian," Sarutobi explained gently. "Most of the time, it either requires years of practice or the possession of an eye Kekkei Genkai to spot chakra, especially when it is as constricted as yours is."

"Kekkei… Genkai…?" Erin asked in obvious confusion as she slowly sounded out the unfamiliar word, a pale eyebrow arched questioningly.

"Bloodline limit," Kakashi broke in suddenly as he fixed his lone eye on the puzzled teenager. "It's a genetic trait that's passed down among a specific family or clan. The abilities vary from clan to clan, but those that possess a Kekkei Genkai most often come from some of the most prestigious shinobi families known."

The Copy Ninja paused for a second as he looked over at the Hokage, who nodded in affirmation, before he slowly reached up and pushed up the corner of his forehead protector that concealed his left eye. For one brief moment, Erin caught sight of a long thin scar running from above his eyebrow go straight down the middle of Kakashi's closed eyelid and stopping just at his cheekbone. The nineteen-year old didn't have time to ponder this however, seeing as it was at that moment that the Jounin opened his eye, revealing a blood-red iris and a small pupil with three black commas spinning around it.

"Shit!!" Erin yelped as she scooted backwards several inches, her eyes wide with fright. Kakashi let out a sigh as he rolled his mismatched eyes upwards and shook his head slightly.

"I'm not that scary," he remarked dryly as he crossed his arms over his chest and fixed the teen with a wry look. _'Sheesh, she's almost as excitable as Naruto.'_

Erin stared at him wide-eyed for several seconds before she was finally able to form a coherent sentence, and even then it didn't escape the Jounin's notice that she was trembling slightly.

"I-if that's a 'bloodline limit' or whatever you people called it, then that means that you're…" she trailed off apprehensively as all of the blood drained out of her face at the thought of what her statement meant.

"Related to Itachi?" Kakashi finished with a snort. "Most certainly not. I have absolutely no blood ties to him whatsoever. The last surviving member of the Uchiha clan is his younger brother."

"Last surviving member?" Erin asked hesitantly, and the Jounin nodded.

"Itachi Uchiha is classified as an S-class missing nin from Konohagure for the sole reason that he slew his entire clan in cold blood to, as he put it, test his potential," Kakashi stated seriously as he fixed the teen with a penetrating stare. "Now are you aware of the severity of your encounter with him that you mentioned earlier?"

The nineteen-year old, by this point, was as white as a sheet and trembling slightly as she stared straight ahead at the silver-haired ninja. After a few moments, she took a deep breath and groaned as she buried her head in her hands.

"Great, so not only was the guy a nutjob, but now I find out that he's a homicidal psychopath as well. This just keeps getting better and better," she muttered shakily, although there was no mistaking the heavy sarcasm in her voice. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he pulled down the left corner of his forehead protector over his scarred eye.

"Are you always like this?" he asked, and Erin looked up at him and gave the older man a wane smile.

"Not always," she said as a distant look entered her eyes. "Most of the time, it's only when I'm really nervous."

"So you're scared right now?"

"Scared was me in the alleyway the other day. Right now, I'm terrified."

"Why?" Kakashi couldn't resist asking. He couldn't believe that the same girl that had been giving him such a hard time earlier would actually admit to being scared. Erin snapped out of her slight daze and arched an eyebrow at the ninja before she rolled her eyes half-heartedly.

"Let's see… I just found out that I'm in some other country that's never heard of the good old US of A, and that I had a potentially fatal encounter with a psychopath who probably would've killed me if I hadn't caught him by surprise before I did the smart thing and ran like hell," the teen remarked dryly. "What part of that **wouldn't** scare a normal person?"

Kakashi made a small noise of understanding while Iruka just looked thoughtful at her statement.

"Speaking of which, just how **did** you escape from Itachi?" the Chuunin asked. "He's an S-class missing nin that's listed in the section of the bingo book that only Anbu black ops get to look at."

The Hokage stifled what sounded like a snort at this question; he knew exactly how the teen had escaped from the elder Uchiha's grasp. Erin became somewhat embarrassed as she refused to look at any of the three men in the room and nervously rubbed the back of her head.

"Umm… I don't really want to talk about it," she muttered. Kakashi arched an eyebrow questioningly as he looked at the nineteen-year old.

"And why is that?"

"Look, all I did was a basic self-defense move that my dad told me to use if someone was ever trying to hurt me," Erin mumbled as she turned even redder. "It was hardly anything fancy, so it's not a big deal."

"If it's not a 'big deal', then why won't you tell us about it?" the Copy Nin asked slyly, and Erin silently cursed at the older man's reasoning. She had walked right into that one.

"…"

"Well?"

"… I have my reasons."

"And those are?"

"None of your damn business."

Kakashi stared at the girl for a long time before he finally spoke, and when he did, he noticed that her right eye had developed a slight twitch.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're telling me is that you, a nineteen-year old girl with absolutely no training as a shinobi, escaped unscathed from an S-class criminal, and you refuse to tell us how," the Jounin stated coolly as he fixed the teen with a penetrating stare. "Even if it is a 'basic self-defense' move, it may prove to be useful at another time."

Erin frowned as she mentally cursed herself for her stupidity. She knew that she had to tell them how she had escaped now. Someone was obviously making sure that she was slowly humiliated during this entire escapade that she was currently wrapped up in.

"Well?" Kakashi drawled meaningfully, and the nineteen-year old suddenly found herself with the strong desire to bang her head repeatedly against the closest available wall.

"I kneed him in the nuts," she muttered faintly, looking down on the ground and trying not to think about that fact that she was telling three adult _men_ this particular tidbit of information.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear that," Kakashi said smugly.

"Look, all I did was knee the psychotic bastard in the balls, okay?" Erin snapped as she glared angrily at the Jounin. "And I definitely didn't escape unscathed. He freakin' grabbed me **by the throat** and slammed me up against a tree before he tried to strangle me! I have a bruise that goes all the way up my damn spine thanks to him! Now can you guess why I didn't want to talk about it, dumbass?"

Kakashi's lone eye widened slightly at the sudden hostility in the teenager's tone, as well as the insult thrown at him at the end of her statement. Fear was coming off her in waves, and every muscle was tightened in anticipation of some form of retaliation. The Jounin examined the teen in front of him for a few moments before he realized the reason behind her sudden aggressive behavior; she was still scared of him, especially since he had revealed his Sharingan, and remembering her encounter with Itachi had only served to frighten her even more. Not to mention the fact that she was probably already painfully aware of how weak her body was from being so ill.

Apparently, the Hokage had arrived to this conclusion as well, seeing as he stood up and started to make his towards that door.

"Iruka, I think that we've taxed our visitor a little too much," he stated kindly as he gave a half-bow in Erin's direction. The teenager hesitated for a second before she returned the gesture, and the elderly man smiled at her.

"Once you are well enough to be released, I'll look into arranging a place for you to stay until you can find your way home," Sarutobi added. "I hope that you get well soon, Erin Cody."

"Thank you, sir," the nineteen-year old said softly. Kakashi quirked an eyebrow once again at the girl's change in attitude and contemplated asking whether or not it was 'that time of the month' before he silently decided that he didn't want to have to deal with an irate teenager for the rest of the day. He had been dumb enough to ask that question once, and only once; the resulting reaction from the woman that he had sarcastically made the remark to was still engraved into his memory.

The Jounin was suddenly snapped out of his silent revere by the Third Hokage talking to him.

"Kakashi, may I speak to you for a moment out into the hallway?" the Third asked calmly, and the twenty-six-year old followed him out into the hall, where the Hokage motioned the two Anbu away before he shut the door behind him, preventing Erin from hearing any of their conversation.

"What is it?" Kakashi wondered as he looked at the leader of his village intently. Sarutobi seemed pensive as he pulled his pipe out of his pocket and slipped it into his mouth, but did not light it.

"Did you sense it?" he asked suddenly, and the Copy Nin immediately realized what the older man was talking about.

"The foreign chakra signature inside her?" Kakashi realized. "Yes, I saw its presence. It's very faint though, almost as though it belongs to something long gone from this world. Put next to Erin's chakra, it's practically nothing more than a small speck in comparison, almost impossible to notice."

"But still, I believe that it might be cause for concern," the Third muttered as he chewed on the tip of his pipe. "When I was going through her memories, I caught a brief flash of what seemed to be a dream of her talking with a boy who seemed to be a shinobi from Konoha. It was after that memory that Erin jerked away, and we seemed to suddenly develop a gap in communication."

"Do you think that they are connected then?" Kakashi asked quizzically, and the Hokage nodded in response.

"Yes, and I find it incredibly odd that a teenage girl mysteriously shows up the day after the Chuunin exams start, and speaks a language that both of us have have only ever heard from one person," Sarutobi muttered thoughtfully. "Also, the boy in her dream concerns me. I have the feeling that I've seen him before, and I cannot recall when or where. There is the distinct possibility that he may be trying to manipulate her, or he may be a medium used to give the illusion that whoever is using him is friendly."

The Jounin frowned pensively as he cast a sideways glance over at the closed door off to his right that hid the temperamental nineteen-year old inside from view.

"So, what should I do?" he finally asked, and the Hokage let out a long sigh before he responded.

"Just keep an eye on her for a few days until she's well again. Try not to frighten her too much, and answer any questions that she may have about here. Who knows; she may tell us herself about how she came to be here, and how she's connected to the boy," the Third suggested as he gave the silver-haired ninja a small smile. "I think that once she's calmed down, she'll be much more reasonable to deal with."

And with that parting comment, the Third Hokage turned around and left with his two Anbu guards trailing behind him, leaving behind one very confused Copy Nin.

Kakashi groaned as he ran a hand through his messy silver hair and stared at the wooden door in front of him. So much for the faint hope that the Hokage would assign another ninja to watch Erin while he went back to his apartment and got some much-needed sleep.

There was just something about the teen that set him on edge, and he couldn't name it to save his life.

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Erin, on the other hand, was just as confused as Kakashi was as she sat in her bed and stared pensively at the wall ahead of her. The way that headache from Hell had just popped up from out of nowhere confused the ever-living heck out of her, and she wanted to know what had caused it. Before the teenager could do anything, the door opened and Kakashi stepped back into the room. Erin blinked in surprise as she directed her attention over to the weary Jounin, who looked far less than enthusiastic to be in her company.

"Umm… are you okay?" she asked hesitantly, and Kakashi just briefly glanced over at her before he sank down in the chair by her bedside.

"What do you think?"

Erin flinched at the older man's tone, and realized that she probably deserved it. She hadn't exactly been polite to him since she had woken up in the hospital, to put not too fine a point on it. Not to mention the fact that he looked downright exhausted.

"Listen, I just want to say that… I'm sorry about how I acted earlier," she admitted, looking down at her hands. "I've been acting like a brat, and I have to honestly admit to the fact that part of it is because I'm scared senseless right now, but that still isn't an excuse. This isn't exactly a situation that I would have ever expected to happen to me."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow at the nineteen-year old's statement, although she didn't see it, seeing as she was currently staring at her hands as she nervously clenched them together.

"Is that an apology?" he asked as a weary grin spread underneath his mask.

"Duh," Erin responded as she rolled her eyes up slightly, easily catching the slightly teasing note in the twenty-six-year old's voice. Nineteen years of living with an older brother had trained her to notice sarcasm in any sentence. Kakashi looked over at her for a several moments before he leaned back in his chair and pulled a bright orange book out of the pouch that he wore attached to his hip.

"Apology accepted," he said as he flipped the book open to the page he had left off on. Erin inspected the cover in interest for several seconds before she gave a frustrated sigh and leaned back against her pillows. All of a sudden, an idea hit her, and the teenager immediately straightened up as she fixed the man in front of her with a curious gaze.

"Umm… hey, Kakashi, what does 'Nanashi' mean?"

The Jounin arched an eyebrow as he lowered his book so that he could see the nineteen-year old better.

"It means 'no name'," he answered lazily, although Erin could tell that he was curious about her question. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I-" Erin didn't get any further than that, seeing as she suddenly burst into a very violent coughing fit. The teenager almost fell over as she clapped a hand over her mouth; it felt like she was coughing a lung out!

Kakashi immediately reached over and filled a glass of water from the pitcher that a nurse had left on the bedside table before he handed it to the girl, who nodded her thanks as she slowly sipped the liquid, and gradually the coughing faded. Erin winced as she gingerly held her throat, which now felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper down it.

"Owww…" she said hoarsely before she took another drink of water in an attempt to sooth her sore throat. "That hurt."

"You sounded like you were about to cough something up," the Jounin remarked dryly as he eyed her speculatively. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, now that I'm not trying to hack up a lung," the nineteen-year old muttered as she took yet another drink of water. She stared thoughtfully at the clear liquid inside her glass for a few moments before she realized what had just taken place. Just when she had been about to make a comment about where she had heard the name 'Nanashi', she had started coughing.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who was behind her little coughing fit.

'_Oh, I am so going to kill him,'_ the teenager growled mentally as a frown crossed her face. Nobody, no matter who they were or how powerful they were, pulled this kind of crap with her and lived to tell the tale.

Erin sighed as she slumped back onto her pillow and set her cup down on the bedside table, looking at the vessel speculatively. This looked like this was going to be a long and frustrating experience.

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Well, here's the fourth chapter, and I hope that everyone likes it. I know that I've updated this story really fast so far, but unfortunately school's starting back up again for me, so that's going to slow things down a lot.

Sorry about that…

Anyways, I seem to be getting pretty good reviews so far. Most people seem to like 'LOTROL' a lot, and don't think that it's run of the mill. That's good, especially since I read a **lot** of Naruto fanfics before I even came up with some of the ideas so I knew what to do and what not to do. Come to think of it, I did the same thing before I started 'What One May Never See' too. By the way, Killiney is a town in Dublin County, Ireland. It's a little remote, but within driving distance of some of the larger cities in the area.

Yay for well-thought-out plotlines and original scenarios!! But sometimes it's fun to take a common cliché and not only add on a new and realistic twist to it, but make it better too. That, and I just love to torture my characters.

And I have a **lot** of embarrassing stuff that I'm going to do to Erin later on. (Smirks) Well, enough of my insanity; let's move on to the reviews!

**Reviews:**

Kiren: I'm glad that you think so. Hope that you enjoyed this chapter as much as you have the others.

Silverpaws: I could easily imagine that happening too. I mean, Kakashi can't keep his guard up all the time, and sooner or later he's going to get surprised by something.

Liah Cauthon: Yes, Gaelic. My friend, who is a total Kakashi fangirl and keeps insisting that he belongs to her, suggested that Kakashi say something back to Erin in Gaelic, but that's almost impossible to do. The only people who know Gaelic live in Ireland and Scotland, so there's no feasible way that Kakashi could know it. As you can see, I've changed that a bit now.

TheCrazyScotswomanOfDOOM: Patrick was one of Erin's best friends, if you couldn't tell from her little flashback incident. His story and what happened to him will come into play later on, and it plays a very important part in how Erin tends to act now.

ChibiEd: My character's first name is 'Erin', not 'Cody'; 'Cody' is her last name, but I'm glad that you like my story so far. Yeah, the whole 'fall into another world and know everything about the main characters' line gets pretty boring after a while. This is exactly why I try to avoid it as much as possible.

rockleefan: Hmm… maybe… (Grins evilly) Who Nanashi really is will be revealed in later chapters, but for right now, all he will serve to do is annoy Erin. If Kakashi gets on her nerves, then Nanashi gets on her nerves even more. Although the fact that he tends to pop up at very inopportune moments doesn't really help matters at all.

The Crazy Evil Akatsuki Neko: Well, it's been a little over a month now, but yeah, I'm relatively new to the Naruto anime. I checked out your profile, and when I got to the funny quotes taken from stories that you've read, I thought 'Hey, that paragraph sounds familiar…' I laughed so hard when I saw that. I never thought that something I wrote would be put on a person's profile because they thought that it was funny. You really made my day when I saw that!

Lady Renyel of Arella: You never really know until you try. I'm glad that you like my stuff though. Thank you!

FirstFaith: Dry humor is my specialty, as well as sarcasm. And I hate clichés… they must die, because that is where Mary-Sues come from. Wow, dude, you're nineteen and your name is seriously Erin?! Umm… that's gonna be a little weird if your physical description matches my character's, but that's pretty cool too.

bookgrl: I'm glad that you like my story. No need to bow, but I do want to win the lottery, the internet and the world… hmm, if that happened, I might be able to actually own 'Naruto'! Now that would **rock**. And Kakashi would be all mine… (Smirks)

Japanese Phrases:

Kimi wa dare – Who **are** you?

Baka janai ka? – Are you stupid?

Daijobu des ka? – Are you okay?

Gaelic Phrases:

Imigh sa diabhal! – Go to hell!

Is minic a gheibhean beal oscailt diog dunta, amadán. - An open mouth often catches a closed fist, idiot.

Na dean maggadh fum – Do not mock me


	5. Chapter Five: Fun With Technology

**Chapter Five:**

**Fun with Technology**

_She was standing in the middle of the dark void once again, and Erin forced herself to bite back a growl as she crossed her arms over her chest and glared daggers at nothing in particular._

"_Well? I'm waiting," she finally demanded irritably as she looked around her. "I know you're here you insufferable little prat. And don't you __**dare**__ ignore me, because I swear to God that if you don't get your sorry ass in front of me __**now**__, I will drop-kick you in the balls so hard that everyone even remotely related to you will be feeling it."_

_There was a startled sound from somewhere off in the depths of the void before the person in question appeared, only to be confronted with an incredibly annoyed young adult. Erin gave the younger boy a death glare as she crossed her arms over her chest. _

"_Nanashi…" she growled angrily. "You have some serious explaining to do, you little prat. Like why I heard you swearing right before everything went to hell in a hand basket."_

"_Damn, I was hoping that you wouldn't figure that out," the boy muttered grumpily as he fidgeted nervously. "You weren't supposed to hear me saying that stuff."_

"_Well I did, so spill. What the hell happened back there?"_

"_That depends on what you're talking about."_

"_Explaining why I suddenly had the migraine from Hell would be a good start," Erin responded sarcastically, and Nanashi gave a nervous laugh._

"_I think that's partially because your body's not used to being here," the boy explained hesitantly, and Erin rolled her eyes._

"_I just now found out that I'm in another world and you want to beat around the bush? Just tell me what the heck is going on and if anything else is going to happen. If you can't tell right now, I'm a little irritated."_

"_Okay, you want to know the real reason why you're having so much trouble right now?" Nanashi finally relented as he gave a sigh. "Theoretically, you're not supposed to exist here since you're from another plane of reality, so for a while you're going to have inexplicable aches and pains until your body adjusts to being here. After about a week, you should be fine though, so there's not really anything to worry about."_

"_Bullshit," the nineteen-year old retorted sourly as she clenched her right hand into a fist. "Not to mention the fact that doesn't explain why I suddenly couldn't understand a word anyone said before I had that headache."_

"_Umm… well, when the Hokage read your mind, he disturbed a jutsu that I did to help you understand what everyone was saying, and-"_

"_You did __**what**__?!" Erin snarled, and she mentally envisioned throttling the boy. "Are you saying that you've done something with my mind?!! How long have you been watching me anyway?!"_

_Nanashi hesitated for several moments, and Erin thought for one moment that he was going to pull another disappearing act before he finally responded._

"_Since you first arrived here," he said in a small voice, and it was all the teenager could do not to explode._

"_Let me make this perfectly clear to you," she hissed, and it was in a tone that Nanashi immediately recognized as deadly calm. "If you __**ever**__ do something with my mind ever again, and I don't care what the hell it is, I will hunt you down and kill you in the most violent manner possible. Now, I want you to get out, and leave me alone. If you contact me in my dreams, I will beat the shit out of you, and if you __**ever**__ talk to me in my mind like this again… well, use your imagination."_

"_What about face-to-face?" Nanashi asked hesitantly, and the nineteen-year old made a low sound of scornful aggravation in the back of her throat._

"_That is the one way I __**will**__ let you talk to me, but that's it! And even then I don't want to see you!" she growled darkly. "Allow me to make one thing perfectly clear; I don't trust you, not as far as I can throw you. After everything that I've just seen, I am not about to trust some teenage boy that just magically pops up in my mind and tells me that he'll be talking to me from now on. Especially since he saw fit to __**mess around with my mind**__, and hasn't even bothered to come and meet me face-to-face."_

_Nanashi let out a frightened squeak at the sudden venom in Erin's tone. The nineteen-year old remained silent as she waited for the boy's response, and all was quiet for almost a full minute before Nanashi finally spoke again._

"_Don't tell Kakashi or anyone else about me," he said suddenly, and Erin arched an eyebrow in disbelief at his statement._

"_Why?"_

"_Just because!"_

Before Erin could say or do anything else, the scenery around her dissolved, and the girl bolted upright in a strange bed located inside the hospital room that she had been confined in. The girl looked around the dark room for a moment before she let out a long sigh and flopped back down on the mattress, bringing up a hand to rest on her forehead slightly.

"I'm really starting to hate this," she groaned softly before she turned over on her side and buried her face into her pillow, hoping for a dreamless sleep this time around.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Erin frowned as she removed the shoebox-sized cardboard box that held all of the stuff that had been in her pockets from the middle drawer of the dresser in her hospital room. The teenager cast a sideways glance at her clothes, which lay clean and folded in a neat pile, before she let out a sigh and closed the drawer, making her way back to her bed.

This was the third day of her hospitalization, and when Rika had come in only an hour before to check up on her, the nurse had announced that her temperature was resting at around 101 degrees. This meant that she would probably be stuck in the hospital for another day or two, unfortunately.

"This sucks," Erin muttered as she took a seat on her bed and dumped her belongings out on the sheet in front of her. Usually, she would have already been up and about by now, and almost completely over her bout with the flu. However, she privately suspected the reason behind her extended illness was the fact that what Nanashi had told her yesterday about her body not being used to this world was true.

The teenager cast a sideways glance over at her new watcher and quietly indulged in a mental shudder. Yesterday, after the Hokage had left, another ninja had been sent to relieve Kakashi so he could go home and get some rest. The male shinobi had introduced himself as Ibiki Morino, and the moment Erin clapped eyes on him, she almost had a heart attack. To but not to fine a point on it, the nineteen-year old thought that the older man was scarier than hell, and all of the scars crisscrossing his face did very little to help dispel that image.

There was no way in hell that she would ever say that to the man's face, seeing as she already thought that he was scary enough and wanted to live long enough to reach twenty-one. Not to mention the fact that he had said a grand total of ten words since his arrival the day before, which had only served to unnerve her even further.

The teenager noticed from behind a thin screen of hair that her 'babysitter' was watching her movements intently, and rolled her eyes.

'_This guy would probably live a whole lot longer if he pulled that pole out of his ass,'_ she thought wryly as she sifted through the contents of the box, and fished out an old grocery list and receipt. She frowned, and shook her head in exasperation.

"Trash," she muttered as she separated the two sheets of paper from the rest of her belongings and started a 'pitch' pile. The next object Erin pulled out of the pile was her cell-phone, and her eyes widened momentarily as she eagerly flipped it open, only to have her excitement deflate when she caught sight of the 'no service' icon that appeared on her screen, and saw that her battery was at about half-charged.

"Damn it," the teenager sighed as she turned off her cell-phone so it wouldn't die on her completely and set it down on her bedspread in what was now the 'keep' pile. "Of course it wouldn't be that easy."

"What wouldn't be that easy?" Ibiki asked suddenly, and Erin jumped at his voice. She had partially forgotten that he was there.

"Nothing," she muttered as she returned her attention back to her attempts at sorting through all of the junk that had been in her pockets. "I just keep forgetting that I'm not exactly at home anymore, that's all."

"Then why did you suddenly come to this realization only after you looked at that object?" the scarred man asked, and Erin rolled her eyes.

"Because it requires certain things to work, and it doesn't have them," she replied dryly. "I need a signal to actually be able to use it, and I haven't seen any cell towers around here, and I have a low battery. And for your information, it's not an object; it's a cell-phone."

"What does it do?"

"Pretty much in a nutshell, it allows you to talk to other people from extreme distances," the girl explained as she held up her phone for emphasis. "That's only the basic use though. Apparently some guy had the bright idea to add on the ability to take pictures and record videos to it too, so we can send them to other people if we want to."

"Messenger birds can do the exact same thing, although I have never heard of something so small that could take pictures or record videos," Ibiki said thoughtfully as he sent a hard look in the teenager's direction. "Might I inspect it?"

"Knock yourself out," Erin said as she turned her cell-phone back on and handed it to the older man, who gently accepted it with a gloved hand. The torture specialist examined it thoroughly for several seconds before he arched an eyebrow in confusion.

"How does it work?" he finally asked, and the teenager couldn't help but chuckle.

"You press this button if you want to take a picture," she explained as she pointed to a button near the top of her keypad with the image of a camera on it. "And then this button off to the side allows you to take the picture before a menu pops up and gives you the option in sending it with a text message, or saving it to your image gallery."

"And what, pray tell, is a 'text message'?" the Jounin inquired, and Erin gave a faint grin in response.

"You type up a message using the keypad on the phone, which has certain letters assigned to a number, and you can send it to someone," the nineteen-year old explained as she opened up the text message menu and hit 'new message. "For instance, the letters 'A', 'B', and 'C' are assigned to the number two, and so on and so forth. You just keep hitting that key until the letter that you want pops up."

Ibiki stared hard at the glowing cell-phone screen for several seconds before he finally spoke. "And what letter is one the screen right now?"

"Umm… 'A'," Erin answered as she gave the older man a questioning look. "Why?"

"Because that looks nothing like any character representing the letter 'A' that I have ever seen before," the interrogation specialist remarked pointedly, and Erin resisted the strong urge to smack herself upside the head.

'_Way to go, idiot. Why don't you just tell him that you're from another country while you're at it?'_ she thought sourly. _'It is now official; I have got to be one of the stupidest people on this planet.'_

"That's because… umm," the teenager stammered lamely as she attempted to come up with a reasonable excuse, only to fail miserably. Ibiki watched her intently for several moments before he shook his head and handed the phone back to her.

"Stop trying to create some fake excuse for me, girl," he said sternly. "The Hokage already ordered me not to interrogate you on your origins, and I can only guess that your little toy probably has something to do with where you came from."

"Oh." The teenager gave a sheepish grin as she turned off her cell-phone and set it back down on her bedspread. "Sorry about that."

The Jounin sighed and rolled his eyes upwards as he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'civilians'. Erin arched an eyebrow at the comment, but said nothing as she separated her wallet, house keys, and car keys from old receipts, assignments for various classes written down on scraps of paper, grocery lists, shopping lists, and paper clips.

"Damn, I need to start cleaning out my pockets more often," she muttered as she parted a sticky old peppermint from her driver's license, which had somehow fallen out of her wallet. "It's like a bottomless pit or something; things go in, but they don't come out."

Ibiki actually chuckled at this comment, and the thought that Hell had frozen over briefly flitted through the nineteen-year old's mind as she stared incredulously at the older man.

"You just laughed," she said as she pointed shakily at the torture specialist, and he smiled at her.

"What, did you think that I was just some stone-faced interrogator?" he asked.

"Yes," Erin said without a moment's hesitation. Ibiki smirked at her, which was a very scary expression coming from someone with that many facial scars.

"The more cold an inhuman an enemy thinks you are, the more terrified they become, and the easier it is to gather information from them," the Jounin stated knowledgeably. "I've had full-grown men piss their pants when I told them who I was because of my reputation alone. Fear can be a very powerful thing, if used correctly."

"Fun."

"Such a charming story, Ibiki," a familiar voice remarked dryly from the doorway, and they both looked up to see Kakashi standing there, leaning against the frame. "Are you purposely trying to give our guest nightmares?"

"I'm just telling her the truth," the torture expert said, and Erin quickly hid a grin as she ducked her head down and pretended to be involved with checking her wallet to make sure that nothing was missing. The two Jounin stared intently at each other for several seconds before Ibiki got up out of his chair and headed towards the door. Kakashi easily sidestepped out of his way, and watched the other man head off down the hallway before he walked into the room and reclaimed his chair.

"What did he say to you?" the sliver-haired Jounin finally asked after several minutes of silence, and Erin arched an eyebrow as she looked over at him.

"Actually, that was the first time that he really talked to me since you left yesterday," the teen admitted before she gave a slightly sarcastic smirk. "I was too tired to ask him anything, and he said a grand total of ten words to me yesterday. Not to mention the fact that he practically scared the crap out of me just by sitting there and staring."

"Ibiki is well known for his… skills… in intimidation," Kakashi said dryly, and Erin rolled her eyes upwards.

"No, I never would have guessed," she said sarcastically.

The older man arched an eyebrow as he pulled out his bright orange book from yesterday, which, had Erin been able to read Japanese, had the title 'Icha Icha Paradise' boldly emblazoned on the front.

Without further ado, Kakashi flipped open the book to the page that he had left off on, and soon became engrossed in it. The nineteen–year old sighed and shook her head when she realized that she was being ignored, and decided that it would probably be a good idea to find something to engage herself with other than staring at a wall or cleaning out the junk from her pockets. Silently, she gathered up the small pile of trash that had been in her pockets and stood up, making her way over to the small trash can in the corner of the room and unceremoniously dumping the scraps of paper into the container.

"You know, unless you want the nurses to get mad at you, it's not a good idea to overexert yourself," the Jounin remarked lazily, and Erin gave a small roll of her eyes in response.

"I'm not doing anything of the sort," she retorted as she opened the drawer that contained her personal belongings and pulled her backpack out. "Besides, how the heck can I be overexerting myself if I've been on strict bed rest for the past two days?"

Kakashi gave a disbelieving snort at her statement.

"Suit yourself," he muttered without looking up from his book. "Just know that I'm not taking the blame if they get mad at you."

Erin resisted the urge to roll her eyes once again as she returned her attention to her backpack. The teenager shuffled through it for a few moments before she removed her MP3 player with its headphones and a brand-new Redwall novel that she had just bought the week before exams, but had never had time to read. Holding both of the items in her hands, Erin zipped her backpack shut and placed it back in the drawer before she pushed the drawer closed with her foot.

She didn't notice Kakashi watching her intently from behind his book as she sat back down on her bed and slipped her headphones over her ears before she turned on her MP3 player. The nineteen-year old made a small satisfied noise in the back of her throat as she scrolled down her list of albums and selected 'Year of the Spider' by Cold before she slipped her player into 'lock' mode, allowing the screen to go black so as to conserve her battery. As the tones of the band members filled her ears, Erin sat with her legs crossed Indian style and her back propped up against the pillows behind her as she opened up 'High Rhulain'.

All was silent, for about ten seconds, before Kakashi interrupted her reading.

"You're reading the wrong way," he said nonchalantly, and Erin made a rude noise in the back of her throat as she tried to concentrate on the printed words in front of her.

"No I'm not," she muttered distractedly, and Kakashi was quiet for yet another ten seconds before he interrupted her, again.

"You can actually **read** that chicken scratch?" he asked incredulously, and Erin frowned as she unhooked her headphones, letting them rest around her neck, and lowered her book so she could stare at the older man.

"No, I just look at the pictures," she said sarcastically. "Of course I can read it. That would defeat the whole purpose of reading this book if I **couldn't** understand the words. Besides, it's not chicken scratch."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow, and Erin's eyes widened suddenly as understanding hit her before they narrowed dangerously.

"You went through my backpack!" she accused, jabbing a finger at the Jounin, who merely shrugged in response.

"I was trying to find out who you were and why you were here," he said calmly, his lone eye regarding the angry teen lazily. "So I searched your bag."

"Does the phrase 'personal privacy' mean anything to you?!" the nineteen-year old demanded sharply as she turned red, her hazel-green eyes practically blazing with fury.

"Nope."

Erin twitched as she glared at Kakashi, who was smiling innocently at her. The teenager briefly contemplated the merits of throwing something at the older man before she decided against it.

"_Bastard_," she grumbled darkly as she leaned back against her pillow and brought her book back up to her face.

"I heard that," Kakashi stated calmly, and received a dirty glare from the disgruntled teen before she hooked her headphones back over her ears and turned the volume on her music up a few notches.

"_Oh, go jump off a cliff, Cyclops_," Erin muttered as she scanned the first page for the third time in a row. Before she could even turn the page, the book was suddenly yanked out of her hands, and the nineteen-year old found herself staring into empty space.

"Hey! What the hell?" she yelped as she wrenched off her headphones and looked up at Kakashi, who was standing next to her bed with her book held between his thumb and forefinger.

"Care to repeat that little comment?" he asked as he stared at her intently. Erin winced slightly before she lunged for her book, which was swiftly jerked out of reach, and she almost fell out of her bed as a result.

"Give that back!" she growled angrily, and Kakashi arched an eyebrow lazily in response.

"Tell me what you said, and I'll give you your book back."

The teenager frowned as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Nothing in particular. Just something that I read in there."

"I heard the phrase 'Cyclops'. Somehow I doubt that's in your book, seeing as it has an otter wearing clothes on the cover."

Erin scowled at the older man, and his eye narrowed slightly in response.

"I may not exactly understand everything in that language that you use, but I can still tell when I'm being insulted," the Jounin said dryly. "It doesn't take a genius to notice that you only use your 'Gaelic' whenever you don't want someone to understand what you're saying."

The nineteen-year old went almost dead white as she stared wide-eyed at Kakashi, who gave an amused smirk underneath his mask when he noticed her reaction. He had definitely hit home with that remark.

"I don't always use it like that," Erin finally said hesitantly, and Kakashi gave a sigh in response.

"Well, you have around me," he muttered before he fixed the teen with a searching look. "Now tell me what you said."

"Give my book back first, and maybe I'll tell you," the nineteen-year old stated flatly, her greenish eyes narrowed in an obviously annoyed glare. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he regarded the piece of literature skeptically before he gave another one of his weird eye smiles.

"Hmm… perhaps. It certainly looks pretty dull."

"What's the catch?" Erin asked, suddenly suspicious of the Jounin's lack of resistance. She knew enough by now that this man loved to drive her nuts, and would take any opportunity to annoy her to the point of insanity for his own entertainment.

"Catch? There's no catch," the shinobi said with a falsely innocent smile, only for him to drop it after several long moments and the realization that the teenager wasn't buying his act one bit. "How'd you know?"

"You're insane."

"Everyone has a lapse in sanity every now and then."

Erin let out a loud groan of frustration before she slowly and methodically began to smack the palm of her hand against her forehead. "Great, not only am I stuck in the hospital, but I have ninja using psychology on me to boot."

"You say that as though it's a bad thing."

"Oh go jump off a cliff," the girl grumbled pithily. "I don't need you using reverse psychology and whatnot on me just because you obviously have nothing better to do with your time than be a pain in my ass. Now leave me alone, and give me my damn book back."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he gave Erin serious look. "Tell me what you said, and I'll give you back your book."

"That you're annoying!" the teen blurted out before she clapped her hands over her mouth. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as the girl let out a groan and smacked her forehead with her right hand, obviously upset.

"You're not the only person to say that about me," he remarked dryly, although her actions secretly amused him. She was fun to mess with.

Erin didn't share the Jounin's amusement as she frowned and looked away from him, her cheeks practically burning from embarrassment. What she had just said was probably as insulting as what she had actually muttered earlier. Why was it that she always had a talent for making an ass out of herself at the worst possible moment?

"Step one: open mouth. Step two: insert foot," the teen muttered darkly as she crossed her arms over her chest and turned away from Kakashi so that her back was facing the man, no longer focused on getting her book back. It was all she could do not to pull the sheets up over her head and just die from humiliation, except that would be even less mature than what she was doing right now.

So instead, Erin pulled her ZEN Media over toward her and hooked her headphones back over her ears, although she didn't miss Kakashi's poorly suppressed snort of amusement. The nineteen-year old bit back a retort as she set 'Change the World' on a one-track loop and turned the volume up a few more notches. Maybe if she just ignored him, he would go away…

* * *

**Thirty minutes later**

* * *

Kakashi couldn't help but smirk at the teenager from where he was seated, even though he knew that she couldn't see it, seeing as he had his mask on, she was sound asleep, and had her back to him. Who knew that the girl, with her viper tongue, could get embarrassed so easily?

He had to admit, the expression on her face when she had realized what she had just blurted out had been priceless.

The Jounin was startled out of his thoughts when Erin shifted slightly in her sleep and muttered something.

"Go 'way, Cuchulainn… it's too early…"

The twenty-six-year old sweatdropped as he stared at the teenager, a deadpan expression on his face. She had fallen asleep in less than five minutes after she had turned her back to him, and she was dreaming about her dog? This was one seriously strange girl.

Kakashi sighed as he leaned back in his chair, only to have an idea pop into his head. Since Erin was asleep, he could go and grab something to eat, which he had forgotten to do earlier. The silver-haired Jounin didn't particularly relish the thought of trying his luck with the hospital food, seeing as he would really like to avoid getting food poisoning.

Besides, even if the teenager did wake up, it wasn't like she was well enough to leave the hospital without anyone noticing. From what the nurse had told him before he had come in, she was still a little shaky when she walked.

His mind made up, Kakashi effortlessly crossed the room and opened the window to the hospital room before he disappeared out it. He'd be back before Erin even woke up, and he'd have something in his stomach that wouldn't make **him** sick.

* * *

Erin gave a low groan as she pulled her pillow over her head to block out the sunlight that was streaming into her eyes from the open window by her bedside. She was just about to yell at Keith to close the window and shut the blinds before she realized that she wasn't at home, and Keith wasn't there to close the window. The teenager sighed as she slid out from under the covers and looked around the sunlit room, expecting Kakashi to still be seated in the chair on the other side of the bed and for him to make a sarcastic comment about what had happened earlier. Instead, she was surprised to see that there was no one in the room with her.

"This is weird," she muttered thoughtfully before realization hit her. She was finally alone! She could actually take a shower or something without worrying about there being a man in the next room!

The nineteen-year old was almost ecstatic at the prospect of taking a shower, since she hadn't had one since she had arrived in Konoha. A slow grin making its way across her face, Erin stepped out into the hallway and stopped one of the nurses walking by her room.

"Umm… excuse me, ma'am. I was wondering if I could use the shower in my room?" she asked hesitantly, and was rewarded with a thoughtful look from the older woman.

"Rika's in charge of your section, so I'll have to ask her, but I don't see any reason why not," the dark-haired woman said pensively. "I'll go ask her, and if she says yes, I'll be by with a clean yukata and some shampoo in a few minutes."

"Thank you so much!" Erin said fervently as she watched the nurse walk away. After three days of not bathing, not to mention the fact of being sick, the idea of having a chance to get clean was very appealing to her.

The teenager gave a happy sigh as she walked back into her room and grabbed her MP3 player from where it sat on her bed before she put it away in her backpack. After the sudden disappearance of her book, which she still hadn't gotten back, she wasn't about to take any chances with the rest of her stuff.

Mumbling about stupid book-stealing ninjas, Erin shoved her backpack into the large drawer that the nurses had put all of her belongings into and closed it before she sat back to wait for the okay to take a shower.

* * *

Kakashi grinned underneath his mask as he pensively touched his hip pouch to make sure that the new Icha Icha Paradise book that he had just bought was still there. He hadn't expected to find the volume sitting innocently in the bookstore window, but he had. Today was looking up already!

The Copy Nin had just reached the hospital when he skidded to a halt on top of the building next to it, his lone eye narrowing slightly as he stared at the window to Erin's room. He had left the window open when he had left, and now it was closed. That left two possibilities; either one of the nurses had shut it, or his unwilling charge was awake and once again doing her best to annoy him to the point of insanity.

"This has to be one of the worst missions I've ever had," he grumbled as he leapt over to the window and sent a steady flow of chakra to his feet so he could cling to the wall. "I'm stuck watching a temperamental teenager, for Kami's sake! Why couldn't one of the Chuunin been assigned to keep an eye on her instead?"

The Jounin heaved a long-suffering sigh as he deftly removed a kunai from the pouch strapped to his right thigh and slid it under the windowsill, using the thin blade as a leaver to gently pry up the wooden sill. With a stiff 'creak', the wooden frame slid up an inch or so, and Kakashi was able to slide his fingers underneath and push the window frame up about half a foot.

It was at that moment that he heard the sounds of someone singing softly inside the room, the words of the song flowing out in a soft lilting voice with a trace of an unrecognizable accent. The ninja arched an eyebrow as he slid the stiff wooden frame up another half foot before he grumbled a curse under his breath and shoved his shoulder underneath the pane, using his grip on the windowsill as leverage to help him shove the stubborn frame up the rest of the way.

Having managed this, the Copy Nin moved up onto the windowsill, only to freeze dead in his tracks when he caught sight of Erin come out of the bathroom clad in a fresh hospital yukata with her damp hair swinging out behind her. What surprised him was the fact that she was the one singing, and that she obviously didn't notice him as she strode over to the dresser that contained her belongings with her headphones on over her ears.

Once he realized that he hadn't walked in on the girl changing, Kakashi let out a slow sigh of relief. You couldn't even pay him to deal with that kind of situation, especially since it seemed to be an almost universal trait for women to become needlessly enraged if they suspected that someone of the opposite gender had peeked on them while they were unclothed.

The Jounin frowned as he decided to announce his presence, but before he could clear his throat loudly, Erin turned around and stopped dead, her eyes widening as all the color left her face.

"Shit!" she swore suddenly as she jerked her headphones down so that they rested around her neck and stared wide-eyed at the older man currently perched in the window. Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he watched the teen; whatever reaction he had been expecting, that wasn't one of them.

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked dryly, and watched in interest as the teenager's cheeks suddenly acquired a reddish tinge.

"How long have you been there?" Erin asked faintly, and the Jounin smiled impishly at her.

"Long enough."

Erin's face suddenly became beet red, and she immediately shut off her MP3 player before placing it back in her backpack, trying vainly to ignore the amusement that seemed to radiate off of Kakashi as she hastily pulled out her binder and the other book that she had brought along in case she finished one of her exams early. She really didn't like it when people heard her sing, and the fact that _he_ of all people had heard her made her almost want to drop dead from embarrassment right there.

'_Stupid ninjas and their stealth!'_ the teen fumed silently as she avoided looking at Kakashi. _'I can't believe that I didn't notice him watching me!!!!'_

"You know, I didn't know that shade of red even existed," Kakashi said suddenly, and Erin, if at all possible, turned even redder.

"S-shut up!" she stuttered, anger and embarrassment making it hard for her to keep her emotions in check. So, as a solution, she simply opened up 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' and buried her nose in it, praying that if she ignored the irritating Jounin, he would just shut up and leave her alone.

"You know, this isn't just going to go away," the source of Erin's current irritation and embarrassment said lazily as he leaned over her shoulder and peered at the text inside her book. The teen growled out an expletive as she shifted in her seat and put her shoulder in the way of Kakashi's line of sight.

"No, but maybe you will," she shot back, keeping her eyes trained on the words on the page in front of her.

"Oh, I highly doubt that."

"Then sod off already, you annoying prat. If you can't tell, I'm trying to read," the nineteen-year old grumbled, the expression on her face darkening as she silently contemplated the merits of throwing something at the Copy Nin, preferably the full water jug conveniently resting within reach right on the bedside table next to her.

Once again, Erin experienced the unpleasant sensation of having her book snatched from her hands before she could even register it, and the teen swore foully as she stared at her empty hands.

"Dammit, would you stop doing that?!" she snarled angrily as she whipped around to glare at the now-smirking Jounin. "That's twice now!! Give me my books back, **both** of them!!!"

"I might, if you stop insulting me," he said impishly, and Erin's right eye suddenly developed a noticeable twitch as she stared at the older man.

"I'll stop insulting you when you stop annoying me," she gritted out through clenched teeth. "To quote my mother 'it takes two to fight'. So when you stop being such an annoying, book-stealing, git, I'll stop verbally verifying the fact."

Kakashi arched an eyebrow as he regarded the girl with his lone eye before a sly grin made its way across his mouth.

"And if I don't?"

"Then I will get back at you in the most horrific way possible."

Kakashi grinned as he regarded the thoroughly irritated teenager that was currently giving him a very venomous death glare, his lone eye glinting in barely concealed mirth.

"Somehow, I don't see that happening anytime in the near future," the Jounin remarked with feigned nonchalance. "Seeing as you still don't even have the strength to get up and walk around the room without shaking right now."

There was an almost audible snapping noise as Erin's grip on her sheets tightened, and her knuckles went almost dead white as she was forced to restrain herself from attacking the older man.

'_This isn't Tyler or Keith; you can't just attack him because he's being an ass,'_ the nineteen-year old reminded herself as she bit down on her lip to keep herself from saying something stupid. _'Even if I tried, judging from what he did yesterday, he'd probably throw my butt across the room without even breaking a sweat.'_

"You're being unusually quiet," Kakashi said suddenly, and Erin could have sworn that he was smirking underneath his mask. "What's wrong, did you bite your tongue?"

'_Okay, screw keeping my mouth shut, he's just asking for it!'_ the teenager growled as she immediately directed her gaze upwards, both her eyes narrowed intently. "Has anyone ever told you that you're an annoying ass?"

"On multiple occasions."

It was all Erin could do to keep herself from reaching over and trying to throttle the overly cheerful man standing in front of her, and she forced herself to take several deep, calming breaths as she slowly counted to ten. Once she was sure that she wasn't going to explode, she looked over at the source of her aggravation.

"Could you just give me my books back, please? That's all I ask."

Kakashi looked thoughtful as he placed a hand on his chin and closed his eyes, apparently contemplating the idea. After a few moments of thought, he opened his eye and looked at the teen before a mischievous glint entered it.

"Maybe."

Erin groaned and slapped her face with her right hand, mentally cursing whoever was responsible for this endless torture to the darkest pit of Hell.

"_Now would be a __**really**__ good time for me to wake up and find out that this whole fiasco is just one big, messed-up dream. I want to go home, where I won't have to deal with irritating, book-stealing ninjas who enjoy annoying the ever-living hell out of me,_" the teenager muttered as she let out an annoyed sigh. "_Either that, or have Cuchulainn here so I can sick him on this stupid_-"

Erin's eyes widened suddenly as realization hit her, and she immediately directed her attention up at Kakashi, who had been watching her ramble on in Gaelic with a slightly bemused expression on his face.

"What's wrong?"

"My dog…"

The Jounin arched an eyebrow as he regarded the teenager thoughtfully. "What about your dog?"

"He's still back at my dorm…" Erin trailed off as the blood drained from her face, mentally calculating how long she had been in the hospital in comparison to how long her dog might be able to survive without her care. "Oh God… Cuchulainn."

"Is that a problem?"

The teenager let out a harsh laugh as she covered her mouth with her hand, worry obvious in her eyes. "If you had ever met my roommate, you'd be worried too. She's not very fond of Cuchulainn, especially since he doesn't really like her. Besides, she's such a ditz that I wouldn't even trust her to take care of a freaking goldfish for ten minutes."

"That bad, eh?"

"You have no idea. I swear, if she ships him off to the pound or something while I'm gone, I'll kick her ass!" the teen growled as she made a violent motion in midair, miming throttling someone who wasn't there.

The Jounin heard her mutter something vague-sounding in Gaelic, accompanied by what had to be a very rude hand gesture, and arched an eyebrow in surprise when he realized that he actually understood a few of the words that the teen was using. Apparently he hadn't forgotten as much of the language as he thought he had.

"Would it be too much trouble to ask you to explain just what has you so worked up?' he asked lazily

Erin appeared thoughtful at his statement before she gave a small sigh. After several minutes, and not a word from the teenager, the Jounin was about to sit down and pull out his new Icha Icha Paradise, when he was stopped by a small sound. He arched an eyebrow as he looked over at the nineteen-year old, who was giving him a scrutinizing look.

"Yes?"

"Can I have my books back now, please?"

* * *

"So, you're the one who caused all that trouble a few days ago at the start of the Chuunin Exam, right? What did you do to have all of the Jounin called out after you?"

Erin forced herself to bite her lip to keep from responding with a very rude phrase. Today was the fourth day of her being in the hospital, and instead of Kakashi watching her, she had a Chuunin who was probably around her age keeping an eye on her. The Jounin had informed her yesterday that he had somewhere to be, something along the lines about watching his students.

So now she was stuck with this hormonal **twit** watching her instead.

"I was messing around with atomic bombs and other weapons of mass destruction," she responded sarcastically, and was rewarded with the sight of the teenage Chuunin going dead white.

"W-what?!"

"I was being sarcastic."

"Oh…"

"_Amadán_," Erin muttered as she resisted the urge to smack her forehead, and settled for rolling her eyes instead. Why did it always seem like most boys her age were brain-dead, focused only on how pretty girls were and staring at their butts and chests?

The black-haired Chuunin fidgeted in his seat for several seconds, avoiding any eye contact at all with the girl, before he stopped and glanced over at her.

"So, what's your name?" he asked, and Erin sweatdropped. This guy really was an idiot.

"Erin."

"I'm Koji," he supplied, and Erin gave a somewhat half-hearted smile in response. Obviously emboldened by her faint interest, he continued. "How old are you?"

Erin stared at Koji with a deadpan expression on her face, disbelief obvious on her features. "Didn't they tell you **anything** before they gave you this mission?"

"Only that I had to keep an eye on you for today and make sure that you didn't try to escape," the teenage boy said with a sheepish shrug. Erin was suddenly seized with the brief and violent urge to bang her head repeatedly against the nearest available wall, but managed to resist the idea.

"I'm nineteen," she said once she had repressed the unwanted urge, and immediately regretted it when Koji gave her a bright smile.

"Cool, I just turned eighteen a couple of months ago myself!"

'_And how you've survived this long is a complete and total mystery to me,'_ the Irish-American teenager thought sardonically before she noticed that the boy was staring at her. Or, to be more precise, her chest.

'_Don't kill the idiot, don't kill the idiot. It's not like it's the first time you've had some moron staring at you. There were plenty of idiots at high school that did the same thing that this dipshit is doing right now,'_ Erin reasoned as she tried to keep a grip on her temper. _'Wait, I pummeled the shit out of those retards when I caught them doing crap like that, 'though Patrick usually pulled me off a couple of 'em before the school security guards came.'_

The nineteen-year old growled out a low oath as she deliberately crossed her arms over her chest and fixed Koji with an intense glare.

"My face is up here, idiot," she said in a tone that any sensible individual would have recognized as deadly calm. Koji promptly broke into a nervous sweat, and Erin sighed as she reached up and began to massage the bridge of her nose.

This was going to be a long day.

* * *

Wow, a bunch of people reviewed for the last chapter. I'm really glad that everyone likes it as much as they do. School's been hectic, as usual, but some cool stuff's happened in the past few weeks.

I went to my first Comicon last weekend!!! I went dressed as Riza Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist, and had an absolute BLAST!! Except for the fact that I had this creepy stalker ninja guy wearing a Sand headband that kept coming after me and my two friends who were with me. At one point I ducked behind a guy dressed as Mustang and asked him to incinerate the guy for me, since he had followed my friends and I after two previous successful ditch attempts.

The creepy bastard kept glomping me… freak. Thank god for security.

Ah, but I digress. I also got treated to the sight of a very good Kakashi cosplay competing in DDR against a female Link. It was pretty interesting.

**Kakashi:** And what, pray tell, is DDR? And why would I ever compete in it?

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Smirks) You'll just have to wait and see, Scarecrow. I have special ideas planned for that little encounter…

**Kakashi:** Why do I have a bad feeling about this?

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Because you're smart and did your homework when you found out that I was going to write a fanfic with you as one of the main characters.

**Kakashi:** Ah, yes. When I talked to your little friend (literally), Edward, he seemed to be quite convinced that you were the Devil's incarnation. After this chapter, I can easily see why. And that …Envy person, described you while using several interesting curses.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Shrugs) Envy's full of shit. He's just mad because I keep calling him a homosexual palm tree.

**Kakashi:** So he's male? I thought that he was a girl, so I sent him over in Jiraiya's direction.

**Wandering Hitokiri:** … you did what?

(All of a sudden, chaos ensues somewhere off to their left, and shouting is heard)

**Jiraiya:** You, how dare you intrude upon my research!!! Begone, you foul, transsexual being!!!!

**Envy:** Want to repeat that, human?! I'll kill you! (Sounds of fighting reach the two, and Wandering Hitokiri starts to look nervous)

**Wandering Hitokiri:** Somehow, I don't think that a ninja can… (Flinches as a loud 'whump' is heard) Did he just drop a giant frog on him?!!

**Kakashi:** Yes. (Both flinch as a nasty, squelching sound is made, and Wandering Hitokiri pales slightly)

**Wandering Hitokiri:** They're so gonna kill us when this over. (Thinks for a moment) You know what; I think I hear my mom calling me for dinner. (Turns around to leave)

**Kakashi:** But you live on campus with your roommate. How can your mother be calling you to dinner?

**Wandering Hitokiri:** (Gives him a 'no shit' look) She made clam chowder and sent me home with a huge container of it. It's dinnertime, and I'm hungry; not to mention the fact that I want to live long enough to see my next birthday.

**Kakashi:** (Realization dawns on him) Oh. I'm coming with you. (Both leave the area, leaving Envy and Jiraiya to duke it out) (The level of destruction that ensues is the likes of what hasn't been seen since the Kyuubi's attack)

**Reviews:**

Silverpaws: It would definitely be interesting to see their reactions, that's for sure.

bookgrl: Thank you very much.

The Crazy Evil Akatsuki Neko: Thanks, I can use all the luck I can get! Yeah, Erin kicking Itachi in the groin is pretty funny. It's one of my more evil ideas that I've had in store for that little psychopath. I've had school food that I've needed to kill when it crawled off my tray, mostly at my high school.

rockleefan: Yeah, it does make sense. But never fear, Erin will slip out from under their guard soon enough! You'll find out in the next chapter how Nanashi manages to talk to Erin face-to-face, and Erin won't be too happy about it.

Rosefighter: Thanks, a lot of people seem to really like that part. Umm… I'm not exactly sure about that last part, so you'll have to wait and see. Good luck in school to you as well!

Kiren: Thanks, I try to keep them that way. How I do that is pretty much think at how I would react if I were in her situation, and subtract any moments of fangirlism that might pop up. If I were in Erin's situation, I would **freak**, despite the fact that I was in the world of my favorite show. Erin's actually a little bit calmer about what's happening to her than I would be, but she's still really unnerved.

FirstFaith: Who Nanashi really is comes up in a later chapter, and Erin almost strangles him when she finds out that he's been lying to her. I wish that I could get sucked into another plane of reality too, and I would so choose Fullmetal Alchemist or Rurouni Kenshin. Let me know if you find anything.

xvegas-on-acidx: Sorry, no lovesick puppy Kakashi here. That kind of stuff makes me gag, and that's on my list of things **not** to do in a fanfic. Thank you so much for your well-thought-out commentary, and I'm glad that you enjoy my work. I love reviews like yours; they make me want to keep writing.

Lady Renyel of Arella: Wow, thanks!!!

The song 'Don't Belong' belongs to Cold, and all of the Naruto characters belong to their respective owners. Any that you don't recognize belong to me, and Erin and her friends and family definitely belong to me.


	6. Notice

Okay, you guys are probably all going to hate my guts for this, but I'm quitting this story.

Everything is just too… clichéd. It doesn't help that I haven't found the anime or manga to this series attractive for a while either. If one of you wants to continue the story, just give me a head's up, okay?

I'm sorry, honestly, I am. But I can't do it any more.


End file.
